Errantry

Synopsis

"Errantry" is a three-page poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in The Oxford Magazine in 1933. 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, invented by Tolkien. It fits the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's patter 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". The Tolkien scholar Randel Helms calls it "a stunningly skillful piece of versification ... with smooth and lovely rhythms". Tolkien described it as "the most attractive" of his poems.

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Details

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Book

Created by

J. R. R. Tolkien