Idiosophy

A physicist loose among the liberal arts

Double-Dactylliteration

While debugging yet another misfeature of my computerized alliteration detection program, I came across a phrase from LotR (II, ix) that was not only a good Anglo-Saxon alliterative line, but was also the last two lines of a stanza of a double dactyl.

Coming from a writer as sensitive to rhythm and sound as J.R.R. Tolkien, that can’t be a coincidence.  Wherefore I plunged into the Archive of Lost Documents and found the laundry receipt on which Tolkien had originally written the complete poem. This particular slip eluded inclusion in the History of Middle Earth because it was used to light a backyard barbecue grill in 1941. Doubtless JRRT was dismissive of the importance of this work because the double-dactyl verse form would not be invented for another decade, and no audience yet existed for it.

Tolkien’s handwriting is notoriously difficult to read even before the incineration of the medium bearing the autograph text, so it was only through strenuous exertion that I am able to restore it here:

Higgledy-piggledy
Gift of Galadriel
Gimli was fingering
Gold in his mind

Wondering if it was
Fit to be worked into
Crystallographically
Perfect design.

This research breaks new ground in mitigating the tension of intentionality. I shall be submitting a paper to the Appropriate Journal.

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2 Comments

  1. “mitigating the tension of intentionality” — you could build a French literary theory on that.

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