At cockshut light (twilight) they pass by Rushey, ‘could smell the malting’ (the brewing of beer or ale, from malted grain), and proceed to Maggot’s farm. Bamfurlong is familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings, though it was named first in the Bombadil collection, and only in The Lord of the Rings from the 1967 second Allen & Unwin printing of the second edition. Bamfurlong has no particular meaning in the context of the story, but is an actual English place-name, probably derived from bean + furlong, indicating a strip of land usually reserved for beans. The name Maggot also is meant to be meaningless, but ‘hobbit-like’; it does not refer to the English word for ‘grub, larva’. The farmer is here given the honorific goodman, ‘the master or male head of a household’ (Oxford English Dictionary), and Mrs Maggot is similarly called goodwife.
A hornpipe is a solo dance traditionally associated with sailors. The springle-ring is a dance of Tolkien’s own imagining, in which the participants often leap up – ‘a pretty dance, but rather vigorous’, he wrote in The Lord of the Rings, when in the middle of Bilbo’s speech ‘Master Everard Took and Miss Melilot Brandybuck got on a table and with bells in their hands began to dance the Springle-ring’ (bk. I, ch. 1). Springle is a dialect word for ‘nimble, active’. An inglenook is a chimney corner, a recess adjoining a fireplace.
In the Bombadil preface, Tolkien associates this poem, like The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, with Buckland because it shows ‘more knowledge of that country, and of the Dingle, the wooded valley of the Withywindle, than any Hobbits west of the Marish were likely to possess’. The verses presenting Tom’s visit to Bamfurlong tie Bombadil Goes Boating even more broadly to Hobbit lands, and to The Lord of the Rings in which it is established that Tom knows Farmer Maggot and exchanges news with him. The Barrow-downs are now mentioned again, and most notably, the Tower Hills: three hills with ancient towers, lying beyond the western borders of the Shire (until the Westmarch was added after the War of the Ring), and thus a great distance indeed for news to travel to the Marish.
‘Queer tales from Bree’ recalls the saying ‘strange as news from Bree’ in The Lord of the Rings (bk. I, ch. 9), with its meaning ‘odd tidings’. The phrase ‘talk at smithy, mill, and cheaping [market]’, however, is drawn from the thirteenth-century Ancrene Riwle or rule for anchoresses (female religious recluses), on which Tolkien was a leading authority; there, as a caution against ‘evil speech’, the author quotes a proverb that ‘from mill and cheaping, from smithy and from anchor-house [home of the anchoress] one hears the news’.
The ‘tall Watchers by the Ford’ are presumably, from The Lord of the Rings, Rangers (Men) of the North keeping watch, as at the crossing of the Brandywine at Sarn Ford. ‘Shadows on the marches’ (borderlands) echoes the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings: ‘At the time when this story begins … there were many reports and complaints of strange persons and creatures prowling about the borders [of the Shire], or over them: the first sign that not all was as it should be. …’ In one draft of the poem, the ‘news’ passed between Tom and Maggot also concerned: ‘Dwarves going to and fro, Grey-elves from the Havens / on strange journeys in the Shire, gatherings of ravens, / rumours in whispering trees, shadows on the borders’ (MS Tolkien 19, f. 22). In a letter to Pauline Baynes, Tolkien wrote that in contrast to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which he intended to be ‘a hobbit-version of things long before the days of [the events of The Lord of the Rings]’, Bombadil Goes Boating ‘refers to the days of growing shadow, before Frodo set out’ (1 August 1962, Letters, p. 318–19); but in the preface to the collection, Tolkien states that the second poem ‘was probably composed much later and after the visit of Frodo and his companions to the house of Bombadil’.
In its final stanzas, the ‘actors’ of the earlier verses reappear: the Old Swan, drawing Tom’s boat by its painter (an attached line), the otter and his relations (‘I’ll go and tell my mother; / “Call all our kin to come’) swimming around ‘Willow-man’s crooked roots’ (Old Man Willow, thus along the Withywindle in the Old Forest as in The Lord of the Rings), the kingfisher on the bow, and the willow-wren on the thwart (the rower’s seat). ‘What’s a coot without his legs’ recalls otter’s earlier taunt and refers to the oars left behind at Grindwall. But how did Tom return home without his boat? That must remain yet another mystery of Tom Bombadil.
ERRANTRY
Errantry is a revised version of a poem published, under the same title, in the Oxford Magazine for 9 November 1933:
There was a merry passenger
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.
He called the winds of argosies
with cargoes in to carry him
across the rivers seventeen
that lay between to tarry him.
He landed all in loneliness
where stonily the pebbles on
the running river Derrilyn
goes merrily for ever on.
He wandered over meadow-land
to shadow-land and dreariness,
and under hill and over hill,
a rover still to weariness.
He sat and sang a melody
his errantry a-tarrying;
he begged a pretty butterfly
that fluttered by to marry him.
She laughed at him, deluded him,
eluded him unpitying;
so long he studied wizardry
and sigaldry and smithying.
He wove a tissue airy-thin
to snare her in; to follow in
he made him beetle-leather wing
and feather wing and swallow-wing.
He caught her in bewilderment
in filament of spider-thread;
he built a little bower-house,
a flower house, to hide her head;
he made her shoes of diamond
on fire and a-shimmering;
a boat he built her marvellous,
a carvel all a-glimmering;
he threaded gems in necklaces —
and recklessly she squandered them,
as fluttering, and wavering,
and quavering, they wandered on.
They fell to bitter quarrelling;
and sorrowing he sped away,
on windy weather wearily
and drearily he fled away.
He passed the archipelagoes
where yellow grows the marigold,
where countless silver fountains are,
and mountains are of fairy-gold.
He took to war and foraying
a-harrying beyond the sea,
a-roaming over Belmarie
and Thellamie and Fantasie.
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory,
a sword he made of emerald,
and terrible his rivalry
with all the knights of Aerie
and Faërie and Thellamie.
Of crystal was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony,
his javelins were of malachite
and stalactite — he brandished them,
and went and fought the dragon-flies
of Paradise, and vanquished them.
He battled with the Dumbledores,
the Bumbles, and the Honeybees,
and won the Golden Honeycomb;
and running home on sunny seas
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he polished up, and furbished up,
and burnished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little while
in little isles, and plundered them;
and webs of all the Attercops
he shattered them and sundered them —
Then, coming home with honeycomb
and money none, to memory
his message came and errand too!
In derring-do and glamoury
he had forgot them, journeying,
and tourneying, a wanderer.
So now he must depart again
and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger,
a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does,
a weather-driven mariner.
The versions of Errantry printed in this book have many differences of detail and phrasing, most notably from the point in the fourth stanza of the 1962 poem at which the mariner makes the butterfly ‘soft pavilions / of lilies, and a bridal bed / of flowers and of thistle-down’, and from the fifth stanza in the Oxford Magazine poem, where ‘he built a little bower-house, / a flower house, to hide her head’. But they represent only two of many revisions in the poem’s remarkably long and complex history. In a letter of 14 October 1966 to the composer Donald Swann (who would set the 1962 poem to music in his song cycle The Road Goes Ever On, published 1967), Tolkien said that Errantry ‘was begun very many years ago, in an attempt to go on with the model that came unbidden into my mind: the first six lines, in which, I guess, D’ye ken the rhyme to porringer had a part’ (quoted in The Treason of Isengard (1989), p. 85). As first identified independently by Alan Stokes and Neil Gaiman, ‘D’ye ken the rhyme to porringer’ refers to a Jacobite song about the Revolution of 1688, in which the Catholic King James II of England (James VII of Scotland) was deposed by his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange:
O what’s the rhyme to porringer?
Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
King James the Seventh had ae dochter [a daughter]
And he ga’e [gave] her to an Oranger.
The song also inspired a nursery rhyme, beginning ‘What is the rhyme for porringer?’ (A porringer is a small bowl or vessel for eating porridge, soup, or the like.)
As he wrote to Donald Swann, Tolkien intended his poem to be
a piece of verbal acrobatics and metrical high-jinks … for recitation with great variations of speed. It needs a reciter or chanter capable of producing the words with great clarity, but in places with great rapidity. The ‘stanzas’ as printed [in the Bombadil volume] indicate the speed-groups. In general these were meant to begin at speed and slow down. Except the last group, which was to begin slowly, and pick up at errand too! and end at high speed to match the beginning. Also of course the reciter was supposed at once to begin repeating (at even higher speed) the beginning, unless somebody cried ‘Once is enough’. [The Treason of Isengard, p. 85]
Elsewhere, Tolkien said that it was an elaboration on the ‘never-ending Tale’ (The Treason of Isengard, p. 106).
The earliest extant version of Errantry evidently is a fair copy, written without hesitation and with its own set of differences from the Oxford Magazine and Bombadil versions. This manuscript begins:
There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, an errander;
he took a tiny porringer
and oranges for provender;
he took a little grasshopper
and harnessed her to carry him; …
The complete text may be found in The Treason of Isengard (ch. 5) as part of a lengthy analysis by Christopher Tolkien, with excerpts from four additional versions written before the poem was published in November 1933. That appearance in the Oxford Magazine is a convenient terminus, but the date of original composition remains uncertain. Tolkien is known to have read the poem to a group of Oxford undergraduates (the earliest ‘Inklings’) in the early 1930s, and in whole or in part, he wrote out the poem (with variations) at least three times in an ‘Elvish’ script which has been dated to c. 1931.
Much later, he learned that Errantry somehow had entered oral tradition, and that versions had circulated or been published without mention of the author. These bore out his view that in oral transmission ‘hard’ words (such as sigaldry) tend to be preserved, while more common words are altered and metre is often disturbed. The metre of Errantry was unusual, he told Rayner Unwin, ‘depending on trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again – it just blew out in a single impulse’ (22 June 1952, Letters, p. 162).
That ‘impulse’, however, gave rise also to the poem Eärendil Was a Mariner, which began as a variant of Errantry, even in its first version with the opening words ‘There was a merry messenger’, before taking a different course (likewise traced in The Treason of Isengard) until it became the song chanted by Bilbo at Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 1. In that line of development, Errantry became a modified account of the great sea-voyage of Eärendil from ‘The Silmarillion’, which ends with the mariner’s transformation into a star, ‘the Flammifer of Westernesse’.
Tolkien apparently foresaw that readers of the Bombadil collection would notice the similarity between Errantry and Eärendil Was a Mariner, for in its preface he calls Errantry
an example of another kind [of poem] which seems to have amused Hobbits: a rhyme or story which returns to its beginning, and so may be recited until the hearers revolt. Several specimens are found in the Red Book, but the others are simple and crude. [Errantry] is much the longest and most elaborate. It was evidently made by Bilbo. This is indicated by its obvious relationship to the long poem recited by Bilbo, as his own composition in the house of Elrond. In origin a ‘nonsense rhyme’, it is in the Rivendell version found transformed and applied, somewhat incongruously, to the high-elvish and Númenórean legends of Eärendil.
The mariner’s gondola was drawn by illustrator Pauline Baynes as a fantastic (‘gilded’) elaboration on the craft found in Venetian canals, with unicorn figurehead and two barrels beneath the canopy, presumably provender (food, supplies); but gondola also has a less common meaning, ‘a ship’s boat; some kind of small war-vessel’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Marjoram, cardamom (or cardomon), and lavender are aromatics, used in perfumes as well as cooking.
‘Winds of argosies’ would be those favourable to argosies or large merchant ships. Derrilyn, along with Shadow-land, Belmarie, Thellamie, Fantasie, Aerie, and Faerie (in 1933, Faërie), as well as Paradise and ‘the archipelagoes / where yellow grows the marigold’, are not meant to refer to particular places, only to the poet’s fancy, and are convenient rhymes. In the preface, Tolkien notes that names such as Derrilyn and Thellamie ‘are mere inventions in the Elvish style, and are not in fact Elvish at all’.
Sigaldry is an old word for ‘enchantment, sorcery’, from Old English sigalder ‘charm, incantation’; Middle English sigaldrie occurs in the Ancrene Riwle (see our notes for Bombadil Goes Boating). The practice of smithying (forging, working in metal) enters into the poem four verses later, with mention of a shield, helmet, sword, and the like.
In the 1933 poem only, bower is a poetic word for ‘dwelling’, especially one for a lady and of an idealized form (‘a flower-house’). The shoes the mariner makes ‘of diamond / on fire and a-shimmering’ recall the flashing slippers of fishes’ mail in Princess Mee; in the earliest manuscript, where he undertakes no special study (of sorcery) until later in the poem, the mariner makes the butterfly ‘shoes of beetle-skin / with needles in to latch them with’ (The Treason of Isengard, p. 86). A carvel (or caravel) is a small, fast ship.
Foray is ‘to make a hostile or predatory incursion’, and harry ‘to persistently attack’. A morion is an open helmet; a paladin, a knight errant or champion; a habergeon, a sleeveless coat of armour; chalcedony, a type of quartz; plenilune, the time of the full moon; malachite, a bright green mineral; a stalactite, the spear-like structure formed by mineral deposits dripping from the roofs of caves; and dumbledor, a dialect word for ‘bumble-bee’. Hummerhorn seems to be a Tolkien invention, but in context with bumble-bees (Dumbledors) and Honeybees, it is presumably meant to be another ‘humming’ insect, such as a wasp or hornet. The prize
of a Golden Honeycomb recalls the Golden Fleece from the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts.
Gossamer is a word for ‘fine cobwebs’. The mariner furbishes and burnishes his panoply, that is, removes rust and polishes his armour. Derring-do means ‘a display of courage or heroism’, and glamoury ‘enchantment, magic’. In the 1933 poem, the mariner shatters the webs of Attercops or spiders, a dialect word from Old English attor ‘poison’, which Tolkien would have seen in the thirteenth-century poem The Owl and the Nightingale, and which he used also in The Hobbit.
John D. Rateliff has pointed out interesting similarities between Errantry and Chaucer’s ‘Sir Thopas’ in the Canterbury Tales. In that burlesque of the metrical romance, Thopas, a knight of Flanders, loves the elf-queen, but must do battle with a giant. Therefore he arms himself, in a manner reminiscent of Tolkien’s mariner:
His jambeux were of quyrboilly,
His swerdes shethe of yvory,
His helm of latoun bright;
His sadel was of rewel boon,
His brydel as the sonne shoon,
Or as the moone light.
(‘His leg armour was of hardened leather [cuir bouilli], his sword’s sheath of ivory, his helm was of bright latten [an alloy of copper, tin, and other metals]; his saddle was of ruel-bone [whale ivory], his bridle shone like the sun, or like moonlight.’) Others have suggested that Errantry, with its ‘pretty butterfly’, fairy-gold, elven-knights, and the like, is a response by Tolkien to his views on ‘the diminutive being, elf or fairy, … a literary business in which William Shakespeare and Michael Drayton played a part’. Drayton’s Nimphidia, Tolkien wrote, singling out ‘one of the worst [fairy-stories] ever written’, ‘is one ancestor of that long line of flower-fairies and fluttering sprites with antennae that I so disliked as a child, and which my children in their turn detested’ (On Fairy-Stories, first published 1947, quoted from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), p. 111).
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Page 8