- "Well, no wonder I couldn’t find the words in dictionaries."
- —Wayne G. Hammond in an interview with Dalya Alberge of The Guardian[1]
Bealuwérig is a poem that was written by J.R.R. Tolkien in which he translated "Lewis Carroll's famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky"[1] into Old English, making "up words to represent Carroll’s made-up words"[1] on a single manuscript.[2]
First stanza[]
Old English[]
Þa wæs swelswoloð. Slíðe tófas
gurron ⁊ gimbledon on græswǽfan;
mímsæde murnon morgengrófas,
⁊ hræðmóman hlúde grǽfon.[2]
Modern English[]
There was burn-burning. The savage toves
grunted and gimbled on the grass-wabe;
mim-fully mourned the morning-groves,
and the quick-momes loudly grabe.[2]
Etymology[]
Bealuwérig is a name meaning "malicious outlaw" in Old English. In a list of Elvish names translated into Old English, Balrog is translated as Bealuwearg and Bealubróga.[2]
Background[]
While it is not known when the poem was written, Hammond and Scull theorized based on the handwriting that it was possibly written in the 1930s. After the poem was finished, Tolkien gave it to C.S. Lewis sometime before his death in 1963, after which, it came into the possession of Walter Hooper.[2]
In 2023, the Bodleian Library acquired the manuscript from Walter Hooper's estate by way of the Arts Council. Sometime while finalizing the general parts of a collection of Tolkien's poems, Bealuwérig came to the attention of Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. In their analysis of Bealuwérig, they initially did not realize that it was a translation of Jabberwocky, "looking up words in Old English dictionaries, but could not find them".[1] Eventually, they did find out that the poem was a translation.[1] Though there was no way to include it with the other poems, they found it to be "too interesting not to present by itself as" Appendix V. Arden R. Smith assisted them with translating the poem.[2]
In 2024, the translation was published in September as part of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien.[2]