O Orofarnë, Lassemista, Carnimírië!
O rowan fair, upon your hair how white the blossom lay!
O rowan mine, I saw you shine upon a summer's day,
Your rind so bright, your leaves so light, your voice so cool and soft:
Upon your head how golden-red the crown you bore aloft!
O rowan dead, upon your head your hair is dry and grey;
Your crown is spilled, your voice is stilled for ever and a day.
O Orofarnë, Lassemista, Carnimírië!

Playing to my Tolkien fetish:

In any other context, I dare say I would have found this poem cloyingly sentimental, even irritating. If Shelley or Byron had written it, I would have weighed in with some choice invective about Romantic guff; if it had been by Auden, I would have railed on about his lack of depth and insight; if it were a Pope, I would have criticised its smallness of vision.

But since it’s by Tolkien, I’ll overlook all its deficiencies and instead say that I actually like it <grin>.

— Thomas

Glossary

Bregalad is an Ent, a shepherd of the trees. In this song he mourns the wanton desecration of his beloved rowans by the Evil Wizard [tm] Saruman’s Evil Hordes [tm].

‘Orofarnë, Lassemista, Carnimírië!’ means “mountain-dwelling, leaf- grey, with adornment of red jewels”. But then, that should be obvious, neh? <grin>

Moreover

If you’re a die-hard Tolkien fan (like Martin and myself), you might be interested in this mail, from the Tolkien Languages discussion list. I especially like the comment about the coffee beans.

“I had guessed that the ending -e was a feminine ending, and that Orofarne and Carnimiirie were particularized, feminine forms derived from the adjectives *orofarna and *carnimiirea. That still leaves the question of lassemista; but possibly the preference of Lassemista to Lassemiste comes from the existence of a word miste with other meaning? (‘fine rain’ in The Etymologies).

I take lassemista as meaning something like ‘leaves as silvery-grey as fine rain’. The underside of rowan leaves have a soft fuzzy surface that is pale grey and sharply distinguished from the brighter green of the top surface. This is quite noticeable in a storm when the leaves are blown back, or when the trees have been cutdown and are lying on their sides, as implied by the poem. Also, note that it doesn’t make too much difference if you translate mista as “silvery-grey” or “fine rain”. I believe the word for violet was originally applied to the flower because of its color though most people now would consider the word to have come from the plant. Oranges however had the name before it was applied to the color. This does make a difference in how words are formed in a language from a morphological standpoint, that is, whether a speaker considers a word to be a noun or an adjective may determine the form of derivatives of that word. But the derivatives may change if speakers’ understanding of the underlying form and history of the word changes–hence folk etymologies, etc.

I think that Orofarne might be understood as “mountain-grown” though this makes the rowans sound like coffee-beans, an unfortunate product of passing time. Although the form “far” meaning in some sense “dwell” is not, as stated, attested, it might be related to such forms as “feren” which show up in the Ilkorin dialects as names for the beech tree, which like the rowan is “spreading”. The form gal/kal also has a dual meaning of to “grow” and to “spread”, hence its application to both trees and light. But that is a rather tenuous argument.”

– David Salo

Administrivia

I’m back in Tokyo (and on email) after a blissful vacation. Many thanks to Martin for covering for me while I was away, and to all the guest poem contributors whose contributions we’ve been surviving on.