History, Legend, Myth, Truth by

History, Legend, Myth, Truth

Read History, Legend, Myth, Truth

 

Brush aside the withy-stems
The yellow willow flowers
Look between the slender twigs
And see the dancing Powers

Vana and Yavanna step
A counter-point of hours
Gold and silver shining forth
On meadow-lark and bowers

O clamber midst the singing stones
Where roots and pebbles scour
The little pathways lizards run
The rocks where slithers cower

Tulkas and Orome ride
Through light and shadow dour
Watchful in both wood and field
Where distant mountains lour

Leaf and blossom scent the glade
Where the darkness never glowers
Figures glimmer, reach and turn
That such vigor might be ours!

Nessa, dancing love and war
Swiftly moves, unveils, empowers
Este, healing all who ask
Athelas despair devours

Look beyond the peaks and plains
The waters sweet and sour
Where kindreds gather, make and dream
Of ships and shipwrights, mills and flour

Aule, Maker, Ulmo, sea,
Snowmelt, stream, mist and shower
Forge and fire, knowledge, strength
Stone and mortar make a tower

Starlight shimmers in the wind
All of heaven Varda's dower
Manwe's Eagles wheel and soar
Ears alert to every vower

What is Myth, what history
Where legend sings of power
Art all true, now, near and far
In present moment, distant hour

Fingon looked at what his pen had wrought. His long-ago tutors would call it over-wrought, excessively flowery and downright frivolous. But not untrue. How could they, when the Valar were palpably present in the land they lived in. Aule taught Elves, Nessa danced in many groves, he knew beyond any doubt that the air in Middle Earth was Manwe's breath. But most in Middle Earth did not have that surety.

What was he, after all? Only a tale, a myth, a legend, a hero of songs. What did song-Fingon have to do with history-Fingon? Very little, even when they were both him, and he knew the truth of both in his bones, his blood, his fea. And he could -- he often did -- walk down the streets of Tirion, of Cir Ondolinde, of Valmar, Alqualonde and Avallone unrecognized. Only a Noldo, no-one important.

Flowery or severe, old-fashioned or up-to-the-minute, songs, tales, poems spoke truths that remained. That were still true, as myth, as legend, as windows on history. The words were about more than the Valar. Slowly, deliberately, Fingon dipped his pen in the ink and scribed in a strong hand across the top of the sheet:

History, Legend, Myth, Truth