Tha Eadigan Saelidan: The Happy Mariners is the title of a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1915 about "the song of the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl" on the Twilit Isles.[1]
First stanza[]
I know a window in a Western tower
that opens on celestial seas,
from wells of dark behind the stars
there ever blows a keen unearthly breeze.
It is a white tower builded on the Twilit Isles,
and springing from their everlasting shade
it glimmers like a house of lonely pearl,
where lights forlorn take harbour ere they fade.[1]
Background[]
Sometime after January 6 of 1914,[2] but not long before July 11 of 1915,[3] Tolkien wrote "seven isolated lines" within his sketch-book, The Book of Ishness, which may be the earliest preliminary workings of the poem.[4]
On July 24 of 1915, Tolkien wrote "the earliest extant manuscript of"[5] the poem. Sometime later in the same month,[5] Tolkien wrote another version[5] at Barnt Green and Bedford "on the back of an unsent letter" from July 11, but again rewrote the poem later that year on September 9th.[3] Tolkien rewrote the poem four more times before it was published in June of 1920 as The Happy Mariners on pages 69–70 of The Stapeldon Magazine.[6] Following this, Tolkien made a slightly altered version which he published in 1923 as Tha Eadigan Saelidan: The Happy Mariners on pages 282-3 of A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the Leeds University English School Association.[7] In the 1940s, Tolkien made another version of the poem and made alterations to this version at a later date. The last two versions were reprinted by Christopher Tolkien in The Two Towers with Douglas A. Anderson's help.[1]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The History of Middle-earth, Vol. II: The Two Towers, V: "The Tale of Eärendel", IV: The Happy Mariners, pgs. 273-7
- ↑ The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, I: Chronology, pg. 49
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The History of Middle-earth, Vol. II: The Two Towers, V: "The Tale of Eärendel", IV: The Happy Mariners, note 12
- ↑ The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, Volume One, no. 33: "The Happy Mariners · Tha Eadigan Saelidan: The Happy Mariners (1915-?40)"
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, II: Reader's Guide, entry "The Happy Mariners"
- ↑ The Stapeldon Magazine, 1920 on tolkienbooks.net
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical AssessmentJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, pg. 459 (entry "Northern Venture, A")