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| Lilyberry of Landroval  Hobbit Fallohide Minstrel 60 2,924 / 2,924 2,215 / 2,215 3,238 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There are a story I ain’t ready to tell yet, but it promises to be a horrible one, if only cos them black squirrels gives you horrible indigestion, no matter what spices you uses… or so I hears. That ain’t right. HORRIBLE.
I thought he were some sorta brigand from the South, but not the FAR South, when I first run into him… or a corsair, mebbe, since he were talkin’ about the work he did on a ship (though it din’t sound like the kinda work that were voluntary). There were a hobbit what helped him on the ship, an’ that were what brought him to Bree-town, I guess, his lookin’ to find him for a proper thank-you. And then he started lookin’ for answers about his parents, since at least one of them were from the North.
He cleaned up real nice, though, so it ain’t no surprise that one of them transplanted Bree-town lordlings heard a rumour about his parents and started askin’ if he were lookin to “conquer Bree.” HA! My sides still hurts from hearin’ bout that.
I ain’t sayin’ what we was doin’ there.
I ain’t sayin’ what we was after, neither, ‘cos it ain’t missed!
Not yet, leastwise. But I is takin’ wagers on what we was doin’ and what we was after and whose it were.
Sinkin’ in the Lone Lands before the Bridge, there are a red swamp full of more red. Red muck in pools of red next to ruins stained red in a red fog under a red sky. Why, even them trees gone red, prolly from sinkin’ their roots into the muck and eating up the blood of fallen fighters until their leaves are bleedin’.
It sure ain’t done them much good, since them has gone all twisted and angry on a diet of war and the Dead. There ain’t no reasonin’ with them — trees or the Dead — except with light and fire, I found. And I got both.
I heard from an elf that it use to be a place with sweet laughin’ water which weren’t all bitter and gloomy, but I ain’t gonna drink that water now. Even settin’ foot in it is somethin’ awful.
There musta been a lot of fightin’ there for a long, long time, for there to be so much red there. Spooky… but it do make for a story to scare a body sittin round the campfire!
If you ever seen someone fightin’ with two blades at once, you knows it ain’t good to stand too close — they makes a spinnin’ flashin’ wall of blades round them, and bits of things spatter all over anyone in range. It are messy.
What I don’t get is how they ain’t choppin’ their own feet off when they do them wild attacks! Practice makes perfect with minstrellin’, but it seems like there ain’t much room for error if you accidentally hacks off your own limbs during practice. I’m stickin’ with my pony-tenderizing club* and not ever juggling blades, I thinks.
“…no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite…”
One hears a lot of songs from livin’ round elves; them elves got a song for everything, whether it be chores or food or merriment or ancient history or dream-tales or all of them mixed up, which is what happens when I tries to learn a new song when I is eatin’ or drinkin’ and listenin’ all at once — let me tell you, the Tale of Leland’s Lunch sounds mighty odd when it’s sung to the tune of the Lay of Luthien!
Fortunately they (well, them that don’t hides away from curious hobbits) is quite patient when it comes to teachin’ music, and they is always eager to sing a song over, and over, and over, and OVER again, hopin’ that someone else will catch all them secret nuances that they puts into their Mastery of Minstrelling.
Ain’t a half bad way to learn a few new songs, livin’ round elves.
Part of that ancient history they sings about goes into something some of them calls Ainulindalë or the Music of the Ainur, which if they is to be believed, were the beginning of everything. Music. I ain’t sure I believes it, myself: The stuff of Arda being spun out of the Music them Ainur learned in the Timeless Halls from Grand Ilúvatar, and battling harmonies between the Great Choirs and all? It seems a bit beyond me, even were I to live to three hundred years to get my head around that, and that ain’t likely.
Truth and ancient history or dream-tale, it still do make for a good song!
I’ll let you all decide what are goin’ on here! Were he bein’ led into a trap? Or were I backin’ out of one?
“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.
Ho! Ho! Ho!–”
We hads us a drinking-contest, one time (actually I lies, we still has our several drinking-contests, every chance I gets). There was some bandits camped in the ruins who, as it turned out, had no more need for the fine collection of spirits they was working through, and we isn’t the types to let food or drink go to waste. They even got wine from the South, said the Lady Aly, and no mistake, since she knows her wines and they is much to her liking.
Until the third bottle. Aha. Three bottles in an’ she’s trying to sing about the Golden Wood she were from, only she can’t half say it, it’s “Laurelimdorilinarnianen” and I ain’t really sure it goes that way, but you knows how elves get around around grapes. At least this time she weren’t going on about the sea.
If you sees her, you should gives her a couple bottles as a gift, and then ask her to say Laur-e-lin-dor-e-nan just for giggles.
((Quoted from Sam and Pippin’s song in A Short Cut To Mushrooms, Fellowship of the Ring, by J R R Tolkien.))
((Full-size image at Artzone; image details at About Images; feedback always welcome.))
“…In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the dark lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.”
