House of the Wolfings: The William Morris Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkiena *s The Lord of the Rings (4 page)

Moreover some of the freemen were unlike
their fellows and kindred, being slenderer and closer-knit, and
black-haired, but grey-eyed withal; and amongst these were one or
two who exceeded in beauty all others of the House.

Now the sun was set and the glooming was at
point to begin and the shadowless twilight lay upon the earth. The
nightingales on the borders of the wood sang ceaselessly from the
scattered hazel-trees above the greensward where the grass was
cropped down close by the nibbling of the rabbits; but in spite of
their song and the divers voices of the men-folk about the houses,
it was an evening on which sounds from aloof can be well heard,
since noises carry far at such tides.

Suddenly they who were on the edges of those
throngs and were the less noisy, held themselves as if to listen;
and a group that had gathered about a minstrel to hear his story
fell hearkening also round about the silenced and hearkening
tale-teller: some of the dancers and singers noted them and in
their turn stayed the dance and kept silence to hearken; and so
from group to group spread the change, till all were straining
their ears to hearken the tidings. Already the men of the
night-shift had heard it, and the shepherds of them had turned
about, and were trotting smartly back through the lanes of the tall
wheat: but the horse-herds were now scarce seen on the darkening
meadow, as they galloped on fast toward their herds to drive home
the stallions. For what they had heard was the tidings of war.

There was a sound in the air as of a
humble-bee close to the ear of one lying on a grassy bank; or
whiles as of a cow afar in the meadow lowing in the afternoon when
milking-time draws nigh: but it was ever shriller than the one, and
fuller than the other; for it changed at whiles, though after the
first sound of it, it did not rise or fall, because the eve was
windless. You might hear at once that for all it was afar, it was a
great and mighty sound; nor did any that hearkened doubt what it
was, but all knew it for the blast of the great war-horn of the
Elkings, whose Roof lay up Mirkwood-water next to the Roof of the
Wolfings.

So those little throngs broke up at once;
and all the freemen, and of the thralls a good many, flocked, both
men and women, to the Man’s-door of the hall, and streamed in
quietly and with little talk, as men knowing that they should hear
all in due season.

Within under the Hall-Sun, amidst the woven
stories of time past, sat the elders and chief warriors on the
dais, and amidst of all a big strong man of forty winters, his dark
beard a little grizzled, his eyes big and grey. Before him on the
board lay the great War-horn of the Wolfings carved out of the tusk
of a sea-whale of the North and with many devices on it and the
Wolf amidst them all; its golden mouth-piece and rim wrought finely
with flowers. There it abode the blowing, until the spoken word of
some messenger should set forth the tidings borne on the air by the
horn of the Elkings.

But the name of the dark-haired chief was
Thiodolf (to wit Folk-wolf) and he was deemed the wisest man of the
Wolfings, and the best man of his hands, and of heart most
dauntless. Beside him sat the fair woman called the Hall-Sun; for
she was his foster-daughter before men’s eyes; and she was
black-haired and grey-eyed like to her fosterer, and never was
woman fashioned fairer: she was young of years, scarce twenty
winters old.

There sat the chiefs and elders on the dais,
and round about stood the kindred intermingled with the thralls,
and no man spake, for they were awaiting sure and certain tidings:
and when all were come in who had a mind to, there was so great a
silence in the hall, that the song of the nightingales on the
wood-edge sounded clear and loud therein, and even the chink of the
bats about the upper windows could be heard. Then amidst the hush
of men-folk, and the sounds of the life of the earth came another
sound that made all turn their eyes toward the door; and this was
the pad-pad of one running on the trodden and summer-dried ground
anigh the hall: it stopped for a moment at the Man’s-door, and the
door opened, and the throng parted, making way for the man that
entered and came hastily up to the midst of the table that stood on
the dais athwart the hall, and stood there panting, holding forth
in his outstretched hand something which not all could see in the
dimness of the hall-twilight, but which all knew nevertheless. The
man was young, lithe and slender, and had no raiment but linen
breeches round his middle, and skin shoes on his feet. As he stood
there gathering his breath for speech, Thiodolf stood up, and
poured mead into a drinking horn and held it out towards the
new-comer, and spake, but in rhyme and measure:

Welcome, thou evening-farer, and holy be
thine head,

Since thou hast sought unto us in the heart
of the Wolfings’ stead;

Drink now of the horn of the mighty, and
call a health if thou wilt

O’er the eddies of the mead-horn to the
washing out of guilt.

For thou com’st to the peace of the
Wolfings, and our very guest thou art,

And meseems as I behold thee, that I look on
a child of the Hart.

But the man put the horn from him with a
hasty hand, and none said another word to him until he had gotten
his breath again; and then he said:

All hail ye Wood-Wolfs’ children! nought may
I drink the wine,

For the mouth and the maw that I carry this
eve are nought of mine;

And my feet are the feet of the people,
since the word went forth that tide,

‘O Elf here of the Hartings, no longer shalt
thou bide

In any house of the Markmen than to speak
the word and wend,

Till all men know the tidings and thine
errand hath an end.’

Behold, O Wolves, the token and say if it be
true!

I bear the shaft of battle that is four-wise
cloven through,

And its each end dipped in the blood-stream,
both the iron and the horn,

And its midmost scathed with the fire; and
the word that I have borne

Along with this war-token is, ‘Wolfings of
the Mark

Whenso ye see the war-shaft, by the daylight
or the dark,

Busk ye to battle faring, and leave all work
undone

Save the gathering for the handplay at the
rising of the sun.

Three days hence is the hosting, and thither
bear along

Your wains and your kine for the slaughter
lest the journey should be long.

For great is the Folk, saith the tidings,
that against the Markmen come;

In a far off land is their dwelling, whenso
they sit at home,

And Welsh is their tongue, and we wot not of
the word that is in their mouth,

As they march a many together from the
cities of the South.’

Therewith he held up yet for a minute the
token of the war-arrow ragged and burnt and bloody; and turning
about with it in his hand went his ways through the open door, none
hindering; and when he was gone, it was as if the token were still
in the air there against the heads of the living men, and the heads
of the woven warriors, so intently had all gazed at it; and none
doubted the tidings or the token. Then said Thiodolf:

Forth will we Wolfing children, and cast a
sound abroad:

The mouth of the sea-beast’s weapon shall
speak the battle-word;

And ye warriors hearken and hasten, and
dight the weed of war,

And then to acre and meadow wend ye adown no
more,

For this work shall be for the women to
drive our neat from the mead,

And to yoke the wains, and to load them as
the men of war have need.

Out then they streamed from the hall, and no
man was left therein save the fair Hall-Sun sitting under the lamp
whose name she bore. But to the highest of the slope they went,
where was a mound made higher by man’s handiwork; thereon stood
Thiodolf and handled the horn, turning his face toward the downward
course of Mirkwood-water; and he set the horn to his lips, and blew
a long blast, and then again, and yet again the third time; and all
the sounds of the gathering night were hushed under the sound of
the roaring of the war-horn of the Wolfings; and the Kin of the
Beamings heard it as they sat in their hall, and they gat them
ready to hearken to the bearer of the tidings who should follow on
the sound of the war-blast.

But when the last sound of the horn had died
away, then said Thiodolf:

Now Wolfing children hearken, what the
splintered War-shaft saith,

The fire scathed blood-stained aspen! we
shall ride for life or death,

We warriors, a long journey with the herd
and with the wain;

But unto this our homestead shall we wend us
back again,

All the gleanings of the battle; and here
for them that live

Shall stand the Roof of the Wolfings, and
for them shall the meadow thrive,

And the acres give their increase in the
harvest of the year;

Now is no long departing since the Hall-Sun
bideth here

’Neath the holy Roof of the Fathers, and the
place of the Wolfing kin,

And the feast of our glad returning shall
yet be held therein

Hear the bidding of the War-shaft! All men,
both thralls and free,

’Twixt twenty winters and sixty, beneath the
shield shall be,

And the hosting is at the Thing-stead, the
Upper-mark anigh;

And we wend away to-morrow ere the Sun is
noon-tide high.

Therewith he stepped down from the mound,
and went his way back to the hall; and manifold talk arose among
the folk; and of the warriors some were already dight for the
journey, but most not, and a many went their ways to see to their
weapons and horses, and the rest back again into the hall.

By this time night had fallen, and between
then and the dawning would be no darker hour, for the moon was just
rising; a many of the horse-herds had done their business, and were
now making their way back again through the lanes of the wheat,
driving the stallions before them, who played together kicking,
biting and squealing, paying but little heed to the standing corn
on either side. Lights began to glitter now in the cots of the
thralls, and brighter still in the stithies where already you might
hear the hammers clinking on the anvils, as men fell to looking to
their battle gear.

But the chief men and the women sat under
their Roof on the eve of departure: and the tuns of mead were
broached, and the horns filled and borne round by young maidens,
and men ate and drank and were merry; and from time to time as some
one of the warriors had done with giving heed to his weapons, he
entered into the hall and fell into the company of those whom he
loved most and by whom he was best beloved; and whiles they talked,
and whiles they sang to the harp up and down that long house; and
the moon risen high shone in at the windows, and there was much
laughter and merriment, and talk of deeds of arms of the old days
on the eve of that departure: till little by little weariness fell
on them, and they went their ways to slumber, and the hall was
fallen silent.

Chapter 3

Thiodolf Talketh with the Wood-Sun

But yet sat Thiodolf under the Hall-Sun for
a while as one in deep thought; till at last as he stirred, his
sword clattered on him; and then he lifted up his eyes and looked
down the hall and saw no man stirring, so he stood up and settled
his raiment on him, and went forth, and so took his ways through
the hall-door, as one who hath an errand.

The moonlight lay in a great flood on the
grass without, and the dew was falling in the coldest hour of the
night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was
asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any
creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a
cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about
near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the
mocking of merriment now silent.

Thiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked
steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the
thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth and silver-grey,
high and close-set: and so on and on he went as one going by a
well-known path, though there was no path, till all the moonlight
was quenched under the close roof of the beech-leaves, though yet
for all the darkness, no man could go there and not feel that the
roof was green above him. Still he went on in despite of the
darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him, that grew
greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf grew
again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got
to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. In
the heavens above it by now there was a light that was not all of
the moon, though it might scarce be told whether that light were
the memory of yesterday or the promise of to-morrow, since little
of the heavens could be seen thence, save the crown of them,
because of the tall tree-tops.

Nought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens
above, or the trees, as he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of
the beech wood on to the scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes
looked straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn:
and little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman
exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale
in the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the
August night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them. She sat
there as though she were awaiting someone, and he made no stop nor
stay, but went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and
kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she him again; and then he sat
himself down beside her. But her eyes looked kindly on him as she
said:

“O Thiodolf, hardy art thou, that thou hast
no fear to take me in thine arms and to kiss me, as though thou
hadst met in the meadow with a maiden of the Elkings: and I, who am
a daughter of the Gods of thy kindred, and a Chooser of the Slain!
Yea, and that upon the eve of battle and the dawn of thy departure
to the stricken field!”