The Seafarer

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Seeking the meaning of ellor-sið, i come upon a reworking of the Old English 'The Seafarer' in 'The Notion Club Papers' (Home: Sauron Defeated), Tolkien's unfinished work resulting from a creative blitz immediately following the end of WWII (with Frodo still held captive in the tower). The Notion Club papers are an adventure of the Inklings, and Tolkien is saying to them what he cannot say in a professorial capacity. The verse is from one of the characters, who supposedly received them as a sort of vision, and who says:

I know now, of course, that these lines very closely resemble some of the verses in the middle of The Seafarer, as that strange old poem of longing is usually called. But they are not the same. In the text preserved in manuscript it runs elþeodigra eard 'the land of aliens', not aelbuuina or ælfwine (as it would have been spelled later) 'of the Ælfwines, the Elven friends'. I think mine is probably the older and better text.

Monath módaes lust mith meriflóda
My soul’s desire over the sea-torrents

forth ti foeran, thaet ic feorr hionan
forth bids me fare, that I afar should seek

obaer gaarseggaes grimmae holmas
over the ancient water’s awful mountains

aelbuuina eard uut gisoecae.
Elf-friends’ island in the Outer-world.

Nis me ti hearpun hygi ni ti hringthegi
For no harp have I heart, no hand for gold

ni ti wíbae wyn ni ti weoruldi hyct
in no wife delight, in the world no hope:

ni ymb oowict ellaes nebnae ymb ýtha giwalc.
one wish only, for the waves’ tumult.

(Credit: Mr Underhill, TCG)

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Where is this first quote coming from? I can't retrace it back.

For referencing I found an entire copy of the Beowulf poem. An Old English Angelsaxon poem, written in style of Germanic heroic legend. Alliteration was used often in the oral tradition, because it memorised better.

Symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellorsið; oðres ne gymeð
to gebidanne burgum in innan
yrfeweardas, þonne se an hafað
þurh deaðes nyd dæda gefondad.

Ellorsið comes as a single word. I think just this single word in the entire context doesn't mean more than all the other words together. It is only used once, not more. Also I think that if you would hear the entire poem, it is not so much about the literal understanding, but the emphasis and accents tell the nature of this skaldic verse, what this heroic legend is. I have seen an adapted version of the legend in film and that gives a sense what it is about. But hearing it spoken, as people would have a thousand years ago, that adds another dimension to the legend as whole. Telling can come with the use of musical instruments. It is phonetically written, a language of feeling and what was spoken, sometimes with words that has an archaic understanding to us today. There are no language rules to it, as we know today. It is why translating it in a correct sense, makes extremely difficult and a reason why Tolkien never was able to finish it.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellorsið; oðres ne gymeð
to gebidanne burgum in innan
yrfeweardas, þonne se an hafað
þurh deaðes nyd dæda gefondad.

Ellorsið comes as a single word.

Aiks, good for you. Do you know what this verse is talking about? That is very important, but it can wait. You are correct that (a) one finds ellorsið as one word; (b) i myself have zero justification for saying it is a key to Beowulf. But what i am chasing is not exactly Beowulf, it is Tolkien's reading of Beowulf. So, gather together the following:

1. In Old English ellorsið is found only once - the line from Beowulf above.
2. Tolkien in his account of kennings renders the word ellor-sið
3. Tolkien in his account translates every other kenning, but not this one.

My usual online Beowulf gives this:

Symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellorsið;

ever is reminded each morning
of the other-world journey of his son.

Tolkien is not denying that ellorsið = other-world, but if you read the passage from 'On Translating Beowulf' you will observe that the whole force of his point is that the meanings of the kennings in Beowulf are deeper than one might think. So where most translators appear to render the kenning = 'death', Tolkien is saying it means something else, deliberately not translating it, and yet most curiously linking it to another line in the poem, which talks of 'heroes under heaven' who are looking out to sea.

Keep thinking on this. I wrote on it already in Cave in Gondolin - you can see more on this. I will eat my hat if this is not the key to Tolkien's Middle-earth. But this is to jump ahead to what is going on with the two bits of the poem that Tolkien is linking here (the other-world journey of a hanged son, and the funeral-ship of the good king, Scyld Scefing).

On your question, verse and quote above are both from Sauron Defeated (243-244).

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Thanks for the link. That website is a cookie jar and it will take a few hours before all 3182 cookies are devoured. But between the first 280 I found a set of Aragorns and Theodens. I have a feeling it is a key to ME as you suspect and in many different forms, but I know only for sure by reading further. Beowulf is a handover tale of heroes, a way people thought or considered themselves 1500 years ago. Norse mythology is part of it. I'll come gradually across more while reading on.

[onthetrail]

Symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellorsið; oðres ne gymeð
to gebidanne burgum in innan
yrfeweardas, þonne se an hafað
þurh deaðes nyd dæda gefondad.

Ellorsið comes as a single word.

Aiks, good for you. Do you know what this verse is talking about? That is very important, but it can wait. You are correct that (a) one finds ellorsið as one word; (b) i myself have zero justification for saying it is a key to Beowulf. But what i am chasing is not exactly Beowulf, it is Tolkien's reading of Beowulf. So, gather together the following:

1. In Old English ellorsið is found only once - the line from Beowulf above.
2. Tolkien in his account of kennings renders the word ellor-sið
3. Tolkien in his account translates every other kenning, but not this one.

My usual online Beowulf gives this:

Symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellorsið;

ever is reminded each morning
of the other-world journey of his son.

Tolkien is not denying that ellorsið = other-world, but if you read the passage from 'On Translating Beowulf' you will observe that the whole force of his point is that the meanings of the kennings in Beowulf are deeper than one might think. So where most translators appear to render the kenning = 'death', Tolkien is saying it means something else, deliberately not translating it, and yet most curiously linking it to another line in the poem, which talks of 'heroes under heaven' who are looking out to sea.

Keep thinking on this. I wrote on it already in Cave in Gondolin - you can see more on this. I will eat my hat if this is not the key to Tolkien's Middle-earth. But this is to jump ahead to what is going on with the two bits of the poem that Tolkien is linking here (the other-world journey of a hanged son, and the funeral-ship of the good king, Scyld Scefing).

On your question, verse and quote above are both from Sauron Defeated (243-244).

I will eat my hat if this is not the key to Tolkien's Middle-earth. But this is to jump ahead to what is going on with the two bits of the poem that Tolkien is linking here (the other-world journey of a hanged son, and the funeral-ship of the good king, Scyld Scefing).

I always like to see people eating hats but I do not know enough on this subject unfortunately, enough to make a fool of myself at most.

I am hoping to visit Leeds on my next trip home and see the Tolkien-Gordon collection. We have a note for a letter from Tolkien to Gordon's wife, Ida but no details currently.

https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/1126

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Hello Phil, welcome back! Have fun in Leeds! I neither know very much, even it looks this way. But by extensive reading I update myself and gain insights along the way. It is just selfstudy at lengths.

[onthetrail]

Hello Phil, welcome back! Have fun in Leeds! I neither know very much, even it looks this way. But by extensive reading I update myself and gain insights along the way. It is just selfstudy at lengths.

My word, that is some memory. It has been at least three years since I joined and then life took over and I found myself with little free time. Back then I was buried in Tolkien's letters, transcribing at that point probably a couple of hundred, now more than 500 I believe and last year with the brilliant Uruloke, Trotter, and Mr. Underhill began the 'Guide to Tolkien's Letters' project which is now at more than 1500 letters, with as many as that, like double, yet to add.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Phil, it may be a good memory. Or it may be an uncanny ability to press on a member's name and read their previous posts - in your case, not too many.

Aiks, for hearing try this: Beowulf: The Epic in Performance - Benjamin Bagby, voice and medieval harp

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks! It is almost the same as I heard this summer telling a tale of Loki and Thor. It has the same sort of ambiance.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Reading Beowulf does reminds me a lot of Shakespeare's plays and the style they are written in. I am progressing... with Hrothgar's court. A bit getting used to the style, but it is in fact quite funny.

By the lines of 1068 -1159 I came upon the Frysian episode wherein a part/fragment is from the Finnesburg ballade in the Beowulf epos. Search on Wiki leads me from Hengest to Finn Folcwalding, kind of the Frysians in the early 5th century. Tolkien appears to have done a study to both texts, searching for comparable elements, resulting in the book "Finn and Hengest", in which he argues that story of Finnesburg is historical rather than legendary in character. The fragment surviving from the Finnesburg poem has no Christian references as Beowulf does.

On religious elements: Though the Finnesburg Fragment itself has little mention of religious elements, the text of Beowulf does. In recent times several critics have offered explanations for the Christian elements of the poem. Christopher M. Cain specifically suggests that the author was Christian and wrote the poem with parallels to the Old Testament to show the pre-Christian world in which the epic takes place.This unique approach highlights the fact that the characters such as Beowulf and Hrothgar act in a way that is still moral without being explicitly Christian. This is what I already suspected from my post in the cave. Tolkien argues here also in his lecture on Translating Beowulf, what I gather from Chrys' information so far.

In lines 1384 - 1389 hides the answer of Beowulf to Hrothgar to the later mentioned ellorsið:

'Do not sorrow, wise man, it is better for everyone
that he his friend avenge, than he mourn over-much;
each of us must await the end in the world of life:
gain he who may glory before death; that is for the warrior,
unliving, afterwards the best.

Here is a reference to the old ways of cremation in the Germanic customs before Christianity; before graves as burial ritual replaced the funeral pyre. Lines 2119 - 2130:

Death had taken her son, the war-hate of the Wederas;
the horrible woman avenged her child,
killed a warrior savagely; there was from Æschere,
the old, wise lore-counsellor, life departed.
Nor could they him, when morning came,
weary of death, the Danish people
cremate in fire, nor lay on the funeral bale,
the beloved man; she had carried off the corpse
in fiend's embrace beneath the mountain stream;
that was for Hrothgar the most bitter grief
which the ruler of the people long had received.

This grief returns much later in the poem back. Each time the narrator repeats to remind the listener what has taken place, slightly differently and each time under different circumstances and at different courts. From line 2210 onward to line 2820 it is one big reference where you recognise the Hobbit tale. After that old Beowulf (around 70 years) is dead. Widlaf is Beowulf's young nephew and heir of the Scylfings, ruling clan in Sweden at the time. The Merovingian dynasty is mentioned as well in line 2921.

These last lines 3169 -3182 line exactly out the Germanic spirit of the name and deed of the hero that survived through this poem across the centuries.

Then around the mound rode the battle-brave sons of nobles,
twelve in all, they wished to bewail their sorrow, to mourn their king,
to pronounce elegy, and speak about the man;
they praised his heroic deeds and his works of courage,
exalted his majesty. As it is fitting, that one his friend and lord
honours in words, cherish in one's spirit, when he must forth
from his body be led; thus bemourned, the people of the Geats
their lord's fall, his hearth-companions:
they said that he was, of all kings of the world,
the most generous of men, and the most gracious,
the most protective of his people, and the most eager for honour.


And this is what Beowulf's poem heralds about.

Edit: I'll edit this post further with what I read on the poem.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In lines 1384 - 1389 hides the answer of Beowulf to Hrothgar to the later mentioned ellorsið:

'Do not sorrow, wise man, it is better for everyone
that he his friend avenge, than he mourn over-much;
each of us must await the end in the world of life:
gain he who may glory before death; that is for the warrior,
unliving, afterwards the best.

Edit: I'll edit this post further with what I read on the poem.

Aiks, you are quick as lightening! Wow. I am awed. Yes. Everything you said is to the point; though note that it is 1900-1921 when they sort out the Christian - Pagan dating, and what Tolkien does in 1936 is explain what that actually means (as in, older scholars had lined everything up but still failed to see what they were looking at).

On lines 1384 - 1389: spot on, and so think through what this means... Tolkien in his 1936 lecture underlines points of view: Beowulf's, Hrothgar's, the narrator's - the narrator knows some things that Beowulf and Hrothgar do not. Hrothgar is (Tolkien suggests) an Old Testament king, a wise monotheist. Beowulf is a 'hero under heaven' - he gives the old heathen way.

And what Beowulf says here is that when in grief, when the soul is in turmoil because a loved one has been taken from us by armed enemies, then mourning is the natural state of the soul and yet no solution - the solution is to avenge the dead. The solution is to pick up a sword and kill. This is the old heathen way.

The ellorsið comes up only later when Beowulf talks of two situations in which the passion of grief in a heathen heart cannot be slated by fire and sword - when one son slays another, and when the gallows takes a son. In neither cases is revenge allowed, and so the seething passions of the soul are bound within and all that a father lives for is endless mourning. That is where the ellorsið appears, albeit in reference to the journey of the son.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

It is the old Norse way of dealing with sorrow in case of murder. Someone's honour is violated and thus revenge is sought. Not always this was the case on death, most people died old person's death in bed, like we do today. But seeking war also the way to make name for young warriors to become braves. Braves would earn after death a place at Odin's table and feast. All my other findings about the poem are added in the post above to keep the review together as whole. Beowulf poem is a song about his reputation in life. I think in those days there were thousands of songs like this, about people's reputations.

The narrator wants you to think Hrothgar is a good Christian, but I think the man isn't a Christian. Reason for this, the tale sits in the early 6th century, the Great Migration period of Middle and Northern Europe and the Merovingian Kings rule in future France and wider regions. The Viking Age has yet to start. It is more or less fifty years perhaps after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire (480AD).

Christianity had different accents, that was about the soul and the way going to heaven by devotion in life. Hence the many monks, nons and monestaries rising up in the early Middle Ages. I have to search yet for Tolkien's 1936 lecture, but I'll do that tomorrow again. And then I compare my own with Tolkien's.

Unfortunately I haven't the lectures from 1936 and 1940 on Beowulf.