Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England by Jane Chance

Author:Jane Chance [Chance, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literary Criticism, European, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9780813170862
Google: pzudsYuo8X0C
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2001-10-26T00:11:06.588523+00:00

His head was higher than the helm of kings

With heathen crowns, his heart keener

and his soul clearer than swords of heroes

polished and proven; than plated gold

his worth was greater. From the world has

passed a prince peerless in peace and war,

just in judgment, generous-handed

as the golden lords of long ago.

(“Homecoming,” p. 9)

But the shrewd Tídwald recognizes the true nature of this excessively proud eorl: he risked and lost the lives of his men to obtain greater glory. “Our lord was at fault, … / Too proud, too princely! But his pride’s cheated,… / He let them cross the causeway, so keen was he / to give minstrels matter for mighty songs. / Needlessly noble” (“Homecoming,” p. 14).

This pair functions in microcosm as those representative poor ignored by the aristocracy and the minstrels. Neither of these men belongs to the aristocracy: Torhthelm, although a freeman, is a minstrel’s son and Tídwald is a farmer. Yet Torhthelm dreams of serving his lord as a warrior in battle—“I loved him no less than any lord with him; / and a poor freeman may prove in the end / more tough when tested than titled earls / who count back their kin to kings ere Woden” (“Homecoming,” p. 8)—despite Tídwald’s admonition that iron has, in reality, a “bitter taste,” and that, when faced with the choice, often a shieldless man is tempted to flee rather than die for his lord. Too, Tídwald implicitly criticizes the aristocracy when he complains of the lot of the poor. The heroic earls die in battle, but poets sing their praises in lays. In contrast, “When the poor are robbed / and lose the land they loved and toiled on, / they must die and dung it. No dirge for them, / and their wives and children work in serfdom” (“Homecoming,” p. 15).

Torhthelm perhaps learns something from old Tídwald on the journey back to the monks’ abbey at Ely. In a dream of darkness he sees a lighted house and hears voices singing. The joyful song in the “Homecoming” (based upon the speech of the old retainer in “The Battle of Maldon”) celebrates the love and loyalty of the subordinate rather than the pride of the lord:

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