A Elbereth Gilthoniel

''A Elbereth Gilthoniel'' is an Elvish hymn to Varda ( Sindarin: ''Elbereth'') in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. It is the longest piece of Sindarin in ''The Lord of the Rings''. It is not translated in the main text where it is first presented.

The poem, written in iambic tetrameters, has been likened to a Roman Catholic Marian hymn. Among the musical renderings of the poem, the earliest is Donald Swann's, published in his song cycle ''The Road Goes Ever On'', while The Tolkien Ensemble recorded four different renditions.

Text

There are three versions of this iambic tetrameter hymn, the first of which is the largest portion of Sindarin in ''The Lord of the Rings'':, book 1, ch. 3 "Three is Company", book 4, ch. 10 "The Choices of Master Samwise"

Analysis

In Tolkien's legendarium, Varda ( Sindarin: ''Elbereth'') is one of the Valar and the highest of the "guardians". Peter Kreeft sees her as one of the clearest reflections of Roman Catholic Marian devotion in Tolkien's work.

In ''A Elbereth Gilthoniel'', scholars such as Marjorie Burns and Stratford Caldecott see an echo of John Lingard's Marian hymn, ''Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star''. Caldecott commented that "Tolkien would have been familiar with one of the most popular Catholic hymns from his childhood, the tone and mood of which are markedly close to those of Tolkien's song to Elbereth."

The hymn is not translated in ''The Lord of the Rings'', though it is described: "the sweet syllables of the elvish song fell like clear jewels of blended word and melody. 'It is a song to Elbereth', said Bilbo", and at the very end of the chapter there is a hint as to its meaning: "Good night! I'll take a walk, I think, and look at the stars of Elbereth in the garden. Sleep well!", book 2, ch. 1 "Many Meetings" A translation appeared much later, in the song-cycle ''The Road Goes Ever On'', and it indeed concerns Elbereth and the stars.. The Tengwar is illustrated on the dust jacket. Readers, then, were not expected to know the song's literal meaning, but they were meant to make something of it: as the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey says, it is clearly something from an unfamiliar language, and it announces that "there is more to Middle-earth than can immediately be communicated". In addition, Tolkien believed, contrary to most of his contemporaries, that the sounds of language gave a specific pleasure that the listener could perceive as beauty; he personally found the sounds of Gothic and Finnish, and to some extent also of Welsh, immediately beautiful. In short, as Shippey writes, Tolkien "believed that ''untranslated'' elvish would do a job that English could not". Shippey suggests that readers do take something important from a song in another language, namely the feeling or style that it conveys, even if "it escapes a cerebral focus".

The philologist Helge Fauskanger provides a word-by-word analysis of the hymn. He includes a comparison with Sam Gamgee's exclamation "in a language which he did not know", ''A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon / sí di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos!'' He notes that Tolkien translates and briefly comments on it in a letter., letter 278 to C. Kilby, October 1965

Musical settings

In 1967, Donald Swann published a musical rendition in the score of his song cycle ''The Road Goes Ever On'', where it forms the second part of the setting of "I Sit beside the Fire". He and William Elvin recorded it on an LP record, which included a recording of Tolkien reading the prayer. ''The Road Goes Ever On'' was republished in 1978, 1993, and 2002, and the recording was released as a CD in 1993, but it omitted Tolkien's reading.

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