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By Root 1310 0

’s dwelling (in this case the destruction of Eoh’s castle by his brother Beorn, see citation (10)), Eriol’s captivity and escape—and in this note it is said that Eriol afterwards ‘wandered over the wilds of the Central Lands to the Inland Sea, Wendelsæ [Old English, the Mediterranean], and hence to the shores of the Western Sea’, whence his father had originally come. The mention in the typescript text of the Link to the Tale of Tinúiel (p. 6) of wild men out of the Mountains of the East, which the duke could see from his tower, seems likewise to imply that at this time Eriol’s original home was placed in some ‘continental’ region.

The only suggestion, so far as I can see, that this view might not be correct is found in an early poem with a complex history, texts of which I give here.

The earliest rough drafts of this poem are extant; the original title was ‘The Wanderer’s Allegiance’, and it is not clear that it was at first conceived as a poem in three parts. My father subsequently wrote in subtitles on these drafts, dividing the poem into three: Prelude, The Inland City, and The Sorrowful City, with (apparently) an overall title The Sorrowful City; and added a date, March 16–18, 1916. In the only later copy of the whole poem that is extant the overall title is The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow, with the three parts titled: Prelude (Old English Foresang), The Town of Dreams (Old English pæt Slpende Tún), and The city of Present Sorrow (Old English Seo Wépende Burg). This text gives the dates ‘March 1916, Oxford and Warwick; rewritten Birmingham November 1916’. ‘The Town of Dreams’ is Warwick, on the River Avon, and ‘The City of Present Sorrow’ is Oxford, on the Thames, during the First War; there is no evident association of any kind with Eriol or the Lost Tales.

Prelude

In unknown days my fathers’ sires

Came, and from son to son took root

Among the orchards and the river-meads

And the long grasses of the fragrant plain:

Many a summer saw they kindle yellow fires

Of iris in the bowing reeds,

And many a sea of blossom turn to golden fruit

In walléd gardens of the great champain.

There daffodils among the ordered trees

Did nod in spring, and men laughed deep and long

Singing as they laboured happy lays

And lighting even with a drinking-song.

There sleep came easy for the drone of bees

Thronging about cottage gardens heaped with flowers;

In love of sunlit goodliness of days

There richly flowed their lives in settled hours—

But that was long ago,

And now no more they sing, nor reap, nor sow,

And I perforce in many a town about this isle

Unsettled wanderer have dwelt awhile.

The Town of Dreams

Here many days once gently past me crept

In this dear town of old forgetfulness;

Here all entwined in dreams once long I slept

And heard no echo of the world’s distress

Come through the rustle of the elms’ rich leaves,

While Avon gurgling over shallows wove

Unending melody, and morns and eves

Slipped down her waters till the Autumn came,

(Like the gold leaves that drip and flutter then,

Till the dark river gleams with jets of flame

That slowly float far down beyond our ken.)

For here the castle and the mighty tower,

More lofty than the tiered elms,

More grey than long November rain,

Sleep, and nor sunlit moment nor triumphal hour,

Nor passing of the seasons or the Sun

Wakes their old lords too long in slumber lain.

No watchfulness disturbs their splendid dream,

Though laughing radiance dance down the stream;

And be they clad in snow or lashed by windy rains,

Or may March whirl the dust about the winding lanes,

The Elm robe and disrobe her of a million leaves

Like moments clustered in a crowded year,

Still their old heart unmoved nor weeps nor grieves,

Uncomprehending of this evil tide,

Today’s great sadness, or Tomorrow’s fear:

Faint echoes fade within their drowsy halls

Like ghosts; the daylight creeps across their walls.

The City of Present Sorrow

There is a city that far distant lies

And a vale outcarven in forgotten days—

There wider was the grass, and lofty elms