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{{Short description|Poem by J.R.R Tolkien}}
{{good article}}
{{For|the state of roving in search of chivalrous adventure|knight-errant}}
"'''Errantry'''" is a three-page [[poem]] by [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], first published in ''[[The Oxford Magazine]]'' in 1933.<ref group=T>{{cite journal |last=Tolkien |first=J. R. R. |author-link=J. R. R. Tolkien |title=Errantry |journal=The Oxford Magazine |volume=52 |issue=5 |date=9 November 1933}}</ref> It was included in revised and extended form in Tolkien's 1962 collection of short poems, ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]''. [[Donald Swann]] set the poem to music in his 1967 [[song cycle]], ''[[The Road Goes Ever On]]''.

The poem has a complex [[Metre (poetry)|metre]], invented by Tolkien. It fits the tune of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s [[patter song]], "[[Major-General's Song|I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General]]". It shares metre and rhyming patterns with the "[[Song of Eärendil]]", a poem entirely different in tone. The scholar [[Paul H. Kocher]] calls the pair "obviously designed for contrast".<ref name="Kocher 1974"/>

The Tolkien scholar [[Randel Helms]] calls it "a stunningly skillful piece of versification{{nbsp}}... with smooth and lovely rhythms".<ref name="Helms 1974"/> Tolkien described it as "the most attractive" of his poems.<ref name="Letter #133"/>

==Poem==

===Subject===

{{quotebox |width=20em |title=Two [[quatrain]]s |text=<poem>He battled with the Dumbledors,
the Hummerhorns, and Honeybees,
and won the Golden Honeycomb,
and running home on sunny seas,

in ship of leaves and gossamer,
with blossom for a canopy,
he sat and sang, and furbished up,
and burnished up his panoply.</poem>|author=--- End-of-lines with assonance and rhymes are shown in ''italics''; --- Line ends-and-starts with assonance are presented with
underscores}}

The ''[[J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]]'' describes "Errantry" as "the nonsensical adventures of a tiny messenger knight who falls in love with a butterfly and battles various insects." It adds that it is then linked to the [[Hobbit]] [[Bilbo Baggins]]'s "serious account of [[Eärendil]]'s quest" as described in Tolkien's 1954–55 novel ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.<ref name="Hargrove 2006">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Hargrove |first=Gene |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |chapter=Adventures of Tom Bombadil |title=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-88033-0 |pages=2–3}}</ref>

The poem mentions creatures called Dumbledors and Hummerhorns. "Dumbledor" is an English dialect word for [[bumblebee]], while according to the Tolkien scholars [[Christina Scull]] and [[Wayne G. Hammond]], "Hummerhorn" is apparently a name invented by Tolkien for a large [[wasp]] or [[hornet]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Scull |editor-first1=Christina |editor-last2=Hammond |editor-first2=Wayne G. |year=2014 |title=[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]] |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-755727-1 |page=166}}</ref>

===Metre===

Tolkien invented the [[Metre (poetry)|metre]], which consists of [[trisyllabic]] [[assonance]]s, three in each set of four lines. The second and fourth line in every [[quatrain]] rhyme, as do the end of the first line and beginning of the second line in every pair. He found this so difficult that he never wrote another poem in this style, though he did later develop another style from this, and the result, through long evolution from ''Errantry'', was ''Eärendil the Mariner'', published in ''[[The Fellowship of the Ring]]''.<ref group=T>''[[The History of Middle-earth]]'', ''[[The Treason of Isengard]]'', pp. 84–105</ref>

Joe R. Christopher, in the ''J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'', writes that the poem could be seen conventionally as quatrains of [[iambic tetrameter]]s with ABCB rhyme, but that the recording of Tolkien reading the poem shows the metre to be his own invention. In Christopher's analysis, each line is composed of "two second-class paeons", each consisting of an [[Iamb (poetry)|iamb]] and a [[Pyrrhic (verse metre)|pyrrhus]]: ˘ − ˘ ˘. There is an additional rhyme or half-rhyme of the ends of the A or C lines with the first [[Paeon (prosody)|paeon]] of the B lines.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Christopher |first=Joe R. |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |chapter=Lyric Poetry |title=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-88033-0 |page=398}}</ref>

[[Catherine McIlwaine]], director of an exhibition of Tolkien's works, called the poem "a new metrical experiment", noting that Tolkien read it to [[The Inklings]], [[C. S. Lewis]]'s literary group at Oxford.<ref name="McIlwaine 2018 p. ">{{cite book |last=McIlwaine |first=Catherine |author-link=Catherine McIlwaine |title=[[Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth]] |publisher=[[Bodleian Library]], University of Oxford |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-85124-485-0 |oclc=1007306331 | page=22}}</ref>

==Middle-earth framework==

For ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]'', Tolkien needed to find a way to incorporate the poem into the framework of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. The scholar [[Tom Shippey]] states that he achieved this "with great ''finesse''" with the explanation that "Errantry" was an early work by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, composed soon after his return from the journey described in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', so that he knew a little about [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elves]], but before he had moved to [[Rivendell]] where he actually studied [[Elvish languages]] properly. Accordingly, the work is sometimes classed as a Hobbit poem.<ref>{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=The Road to Middle-Earth |date=2005 |edition=Third |orig-year=1982 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0261102750 |page=319}}</ref>

==Setting==
[[File:MajGeneraldrawing.jpg|thumb|upright|The poem was inspired by [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s "[[Major-General's Song]]".<ref name="Nelson 2006"/> 1884 illustration]]

The composer and entertainer [[Donald Swann]] set the poem to music. The sheet music and an audio recording are part of his 1967 [[song cycle]], ''[[The Road Goes Ever On]]''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Song-Cycles: The Road Goes Ever On (1967) |url=http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/songcycles.html |website=The Donald Swann Website |access-date=4 September 2020}}</ref>

The ''J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'' states that the poem was "evidently" inspired by [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s [[patter song]] "[[Major-General's Song|I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General]]", whose tune it fits, and further that Swann's musical setting is an obvious [[pastiche]] of Sullivan's style.<ref name="Nelson 2006">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Nelson |first=Dale |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |chapter=Literary Influences: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |title=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-88033-0 |page=368}}</ref>

==Analysis==

The scholar of English [[Randel Helms]] described "Errantry" as "a stunningly skillful piece of versification{{nbsp}}... with smooth and lovely rhythms".<ref name="Helms 1974">{{cite book |last=Helms |first=Randel |author-link=Randel Helms |title=Tolkien's World |date=1974 |publisher=[[Thames and Hudson]] |isbn=978-0500011140 |page=130}}</ref> The Scottish poet [[Alan Bold]], who, Melanie Rawls notes, disliked almost all of Tolkien's verse, dismissed Helm's praise, writing that the poem "certainly displays all the sentimental silliness of the early Tolkien with its relentlessly contrived internal rhyming".<ref name="Rawls 1993">{{cite journal |last=Rawls |first=Melanie A. |year=1993 |title=The Verse of J.R.R. Tolkien |journal=[[Mythlore]] |volume=19 |issue=1 |at=Article 1 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol19/iss1/1}}</ref><ref name="Bold 1983">{{cite book |last=Bold |first=Alan |editor-last=Giddings |editor-first=Robert |chapter=Hobbit Verse Versus Tolkien's Poem |title=J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land |date=1983 |publisher=Vision Press |pages=137–153 |isbn=978-0389203742}}</ref>

Shippey comments that the subject matter of tiny [[fairies]] was exactly what, later in his career, Tolkien came to abhor, emphasising instead the energy and strength of [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elves]] and [[Dwarf (Middle-earth)|Dwarves]]. He suggests that Tolkien may have been especially proud of the poem's complex metre, and so chose to rework and extend the poem for the 1962 book.<ref name="Shippey 2006">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |chapter=Poems by Tolkien: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil |title=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-88033-0 |pages=515–517}}</ref> Tolkien indeed called it "the most attractive" of his poems in a 1952 letter to his publisher, [[Rayner Unwin]], adding that

{{quote|it is in a metre I invented (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).<ref>{{cite journal |last=Deyo |first=Steven M. |year=1986 |title=Niggle's Leaves: The Red Book of Westmarch and Related Minor Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien |journal=[[Mythlore]] |volume=12 |issue=3 |at=Article 8 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/8}}</ref><ref name="Letter #133">{{ME-ref|Letters|#133 to [[Rayner Unwin]], 22 June 1952}}</ref>}}

[[Paul H. Kocher]] writes that "Errantry" and the "[[Song of Eärendil]]" are "obviously designed for contrast", as if Tolkien had set himself the challenge of using the same theme of endless wandering, the same metrical forms and the same rhyming schemes, it would be possible to create both a tragedy and an "airy jest": "Looking at the passages picturing the armour of the two heroes we can see both the similarity in structure and the polarity in tone".<ref name="Kocher 1974">{{cite book |last=Kocher |first=Paul |author-link=Paul H. Kocher |title=Master of Middle-earth: The Achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien |title-link=Master of Middle-earth |date=1974 |orig-year=1972 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-14-003877-4 |pages=192–194}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|+ [[Paul H. Kocher|Kocher's]] comparison of "Eärendil" and "Errantry"<ref name="Kocher 1974"/>
|-
! "[[Song of Eärendil|Eärendil]]", a tragedy !! "Errantry", an "airy jest"
|-
| In panoply of ancient kings, In chained rings he armoured him; His shining '''shield''' was scored with runes To ward all wounds and harm from him; His bow was made of dragon-horn, His arrows shorn of '''ebony''', Of silver '''was his habergeon''', '''His scabbard of chalcedony'''; His '''sword''' of steel was valiant, Of adamant his helmet tall, An eagle-plume upon his crest, Upon his breast an '''emerald'''.

| He made a '''shield''' and morion of coral and of ivory, a '''sword''' he made of '''emerald''', ... Of crystal '''was his habergeon''', '''His scabbard of chalcedony'''; with silver tipped at plenilune his spear was hewn in '''ebony'''. His javelins were of malachite and stalactite — he brandished them. 
|}

==References==

===Primary===

{{reflist|group=T|28em}}

===Secondary===
{{reflist|28em}}

{{J. R. R. Tolkien}}

[[Category:1933 poems]]
[[Category:British poems]]
[[Category:Middle-earth poetry]]
[[Category:Middle-earth music]]

[[fr:Les Aventures de Tom Bombadil#Errance]]

Errantry - Revision history

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