Your Humble Narrator, decked out in Renfest-cottagecore regalia for an evening’s reading in Middle Earth. Note that I’m quaffing a beer, as rum isn’t a thing in Middle Earth, so far as I can tell!
Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go
To heal my heart and drown my woe.
Rain may fall and wind may blow,
And many miles be still to go,
But under a tall tree, I will lie,
And let the clouds go sailing by.Drinking Song from The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien.
A while back I embarked on a re-read of The Lord of the Rings. My progress has been slower than usual, because of reasons, but as ever I find myself loving this story deeply, and Tolkien’s luminous, lyrical writing continues to astonish and amaze me. I am as drawn in as ever, and this time I’m paying special attention to the poetry, of which JRRT writes many different kinds…including a drinking song or two.
The Peter Jackson movies did a decent job of incorporating Tolkien’s poetry, as much as they could for mass audiences, and here’s an artist who compiles some of the drinking songs from the films into one medley. The songs aren’t entirely Tolkien, but they contain enough of him that I don’t think he’d object to any of this.
Sighing towards Gomorrah
There’s a particular type of response from Gun Enthusiasts* that you’ll run into each and every time there’s a mass shooting in this country (which means, you can see this response each and every day, if you look for it, since we now have mass shootings on a daily basis). This response is always offered in response to calls for weapons bans. Here’s a perfect example:
This is a very popular response, but I always find it odd that none of these Gun Enthusiasts* ever seem to consider that the person who committed whatever mass shooting it is that drew their response could have said or posted the exact same thing, right up until they actually started shooting.
* By “Gun Enthusiasts” I mean, “Gun Nuts”.