Friday, June 18, 2021

The Passing Of The Elves

As I was on a walk this week, the thought suddenly occurred to me that I wondered if the very short excerpt from The Lord Of The Rings movie where the Elves are seen leaving Middle Earth with accompanying music was actually part of a longer song.

A little search and I found what I wanted (Thanks, InterWeb!).  The words are based on songs (untranslated but done after the fact) in Tolkien's books.

The first version is a version with the lyrics, which I enjoyed although I found it a little visually distracting.  The second version is just the song itself.  Run time is about 3 minutes - a given, of course, I do not own the copyrights and presented for entertainment value only and so forth.





In the movie, Sam says to Frodo "I don't know why, but it makes me sad."

It makes me sad too, Sam, because seeing the beautiful and lovely pass from the world is always a terrible thing.

4 comments:

  1. I remember when I read the original books many many moons ago, that they were interlaced with lengthy song lyrics written down by Tolkien. I'm pretty sure for the most part I just skipped over them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ed, I suspect a great many people (myself included). That said, it was probably a shame on my part. It was much later that I came to appreciate the fact that an author would write cogent and coherent songs - in another language that he had invented and was internally consistent. Compared to that, 98% of the writing Fantasy and Science Fiction authors of the past 50 years have nothing to talk about.

      Delete
  2. It's a lovely song TB. The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings were books that I read over and over as a teenager and young adult. I was so thrilled when they made decent movies out of them. I thought the passing of the elves was sad as well!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It really is Rain. I had to look up the original reference to it.

      I read them over and over as well (I remember clearly when I was in 5th grade on Christmas Eve, sitting up at 1 in the morning reading The Two Towers). And even now as I read it, I continue to find new things and am even more impressed by the breadth of Tolkien's accomplishment.

      I was indeed thrilled - and pleasantly surprised as well - when they managed to make decent movies out of The Lord Of The Rings, and then they followed on with The Hobbit. That said, it sounds like Amazon has gotten a hold of the series, so I suspect the quality of the story will drop considerably - there are a lot of things Tolkien never included in his books that are standard fare in today's entertainment market. It is regrettable.

      Delete

Comments are welcome (and necessary, for good conversation). If you could take the time to be kind and not practice profanity, it would be appreciated. Thanks for posting!