Forgotten Ground Regained
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), a professor at Oxford University, pretty much single-handedly brought alliterative verse back into the general culture through his work, both his alliterative poems in The Lord of the Rings and through the (mostly posthumous) publication of his long alliterative poems, including:
- The Fall of Arthur
- The Lays of Beleriand (which contains the alliterative poems "The Lay of Eärendil", "The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor", and "The Lay of the Children of Húrin")
- The Legend of Sigrid and Gudrún (which contains the alliterative poems "The New Lay of Gudrun" and "The New Lay of the Volsungs")
- The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son
His alliterative translations include:
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Pearl
- The Song of Beewolf Son of Echgethew (in his Collected Poems, #88)
However, lay readers will probably be most familiar with his alliterative poems publihed in Lord of the Rings:
- The Prophecy of the Paths of the Dead
- Eomer's Battle Song
- Fangorn's "Lore of Living Creatures
- The Riding of the Rohirrim
- Theoden's Call to Arms
- The Song of Eorl the Young
- The Mounds of Mundberg
- Riders of Theoden
- The Riding Song of the Rohirrim
- Aragorn's Song about the Oath-Breakers
- Song of New Hope
- Lament for Theoden
- Inscription on Snowmane's Grave
Other alliterative poems he has written are available in his Collected Poems, including:
Narquelion, #41 The Motor-Cyclists, #63As Light as Leaf on Linden-tree, #64The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin, lines 157-168, #66The Childen of Hurin/Winter Comes to Nargothrond, #67The Nameless Land/The Song of Aelfwine, #74The Song of Beewolf Son of Echgethew (Beowulf partial translation), #88 The Derelicts, #119Black Heave the Bllows, #133Doworst, #139King Sheave, #146Be HE Foe or Friend, Be He Foul or Clean, #176To the University of Oxford, #183
For W.H.A, #195 (English version published in Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review Vol. 18 No. 2. pp. 96-9.
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