Iúmonna Gold Galdre Admiring

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Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden or The Hoard ('the hoard' or 'the treasure') is a poem by the English writer and philologist J. RR Tolkien from 1923. The title is taken from a line by Beowulf .

background

The line (Beowulf 3052) Old English iūmonna gold, galdre is translated as “ the gold of men of long ago enmeshed in enchantment ” or “ the gold of the ancients wrapped in a spel ”, which translates as “Der ancestors gold, in the Prehistoric days protected by magic ”or“ the gold of the ancients trapped in a spell ”means. CS Lewis , a friend of Tolkien's, also dealt with the dragon theme and wrote the poem Once the worm-laid egg broke in the wood , which was in the treatise Beowulf and the Critics. was reprinted together with Tolkien's verses. The allusion of the poem to the verses from the Beowulf can be clearly seen, not only the original name Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden but also the description of the sleeping dragon who watches over his hoard and sniffs out every intruder who enters his cave, show parallels . The respective guardian of the treasure becomes wicked personified, whose greed for gold does not stop from murdering the current owner in order to get to the hoard and then defend it against any intruder or thief. Ultimately, this dragon is challenged by a brave warrior and defeated in a duel.

content

The Hoard is a poem consisting of five stanzas of 16, 16, 20, 16 and 8 lines. It tells of the beginnings or the creation of silver and gold, of the refinement of the metal by the skilled craftsmen of the Elves, who disappeared from the world and left their works behind. So the gold treasures were first collected by a dwarf and brought together to a hoard and who had nothing more in mind than to increase and protect the treasure.

  • Stanza 1: The lines are about the gods who distributed silver and gold in the world, from the happily singing elves who made it into jewelry and fine objects that aroused the greed of others. So they were slain or put in chains and their treasures gathered in pits when the shadow rolled over their home.
  • Stanza 2: Here I found out about a dwarf who sits in a dark cave and forged rings and coins out of gold for a long time because he wanted to buy power, but he has aged and has long forgotten the world outside. His eyes are blinded by the shine, his ears have become numb, so he does not hear the young dragon who comes in to quench his thirst. He breathes fire on the dwarf and it crumbles to ashes.
  • Stanza 3: A lot of time has passed and the dragon has grown old and lazy, he knows every object in his hoard, even the smallest ring. His ears drooped and his breathing became weaker, so he did not hear the brave warrior who called him to fight. His sharp teeth were of no use when the sword dug into his body and his fire went out.
  • Stanza 4: An old king with a long beard, sits there and has hidden all his treasures behind thick iron-clad gates. His empire has fallen apart, his halls destroyed, but he is the king with the elven gold. His bones are carelessly buried in a pit.
  • Stanza 5: The moral of the story, wealth and greed did not bring happiness to its owners. The last lines are
original

There is an old hoard in a dark rock,
forgotten behind doors none can unlock;
that grim gate no man can pass.
On the mound grows the green grass;

there sheep feed and the larks soar,
and the wind blows from the sea-shore.
The old hoard the Night shall keep,
while earth waits and the Elves sleep.

translation

If there is a treasure under iron-gray basalt,
long ago and anciently forgotten
behind the door and gate, and nobody knows
how to open it, at whose behest.

Strange, sheep graze on the green grass above the old vault,
larks rise and winds blow, night veils what happened before,
dark injustice and heavy punishments.
The earth waits, the elves sleep.

Important details for the representation of the dragon were for Tolkien:

  • the recognizable animal ancestry
  • the personification of wickedness, destruction and greed
  • the direct encounter with the hero in a duel
  • the reinforcement of the Faërie element ( fairytale ) through its presence

expenditure

  • Iúmonna Gold Galdre Admiring. In: The Gryphon. The journal of the University of Leeds. New Series, Vol. 4, No. 4, Jan 1923, Leeds, p. 130.
  • Iúmonna Gold Galdre Admiring. In: The Annotated Hobbit. The hobbit, or, there and back again. Unwin Hyman, London 1989, ISBN 0-395-47690-9 , pp. 288-289.
  • Iúmonna Gold Galdre Admiring. In: Beowulf and the Critics. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, Ariz. 2002, ISBN 0-86698-290-6 (also contains the poem Once the worm-laid egg broke in the wood by CS Lewis).
  • The Hoard. In: Oxford Magazine. 55, No. 15, The Oxonian Press, Oxford March 4, 1937, p. 473.
  • The Hoard . In: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. And other verses from The Red Book. HarperCollins Publishers, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-00-758469-7 , pp. 241–243 (first edition: George Allen & Unwin, 1962).
  • 14 The Hoard . In: Tales from the Perilous Realm . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston / New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-547-95209-3 ( books.google.de - reading sample).

See also

literature

  • Jane Chance: Tolkien's Fairy Story Beowulfs (1926-1940s) . In: Tolkien, Self and Other: “This Queer Creature” . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-39896-3 , pp. 84-56 ( books.google.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beowulf . Manchester University Press, S. 89 ( books.google.de ).
  2. ↑ From a letter from Mrs. Pauline Gasch ( Pauline Baynes ) December 6, 1961 to JRR Tolkien. (Humphrey Carpenter: The letters of JRR Tolkien. Letter 235, p. 312.)
  3. ↑ Beowulf (3052/3053). In: heorot.dk. Retrieved February 28, 2018 .
  4. ↑ CS Lewis: The Pilgrim's Regress. The Wade Annotated Edition . Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan 2014, ISBN 978-0-8028-7208-1 , pp. 198 ( books.google.de ).
  5. ↑ a b Sara Legard: Essential Dragons Beyond Tolkien's Middle-earth . In: Mythmoot II: Back Again Proceedings of the 2nd Mythgard Institute Mythmoot Conference Center at the Maritime Institute, Linthicum, Maryland December 13-15, 2013 . December 2013 ( mythgard.org [PDF; 870 kB ]).
  6. ^ A b John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: The Hoard . In: The Adventures of Tom Bombadi . 1962 ( ae-lib.org.ua ).
  7. ↑ JRR Tolkien: 14 The Hort . In: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil . Klett-Cotta, 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-10941-2 ( books.google.de - reading sample).