Errantry is a three-page long poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in 1933. It was included in Tolkien's short poetry collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a collection of poetry written by J. R. R. Tolkien and published in 1962. The book contains 16 poems, only two of which deal with Tom Bombadil, a character who is most famous for his encounter with Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring...

(1962).

Tolkien invented the meter, which consists of trisyllabic assonance

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...

s, three in each set of four lines. The second and fourth line in every quartet rhyme, as do the end of the first line and beginning of the second line in every pair. This was so difficult that he never wrote another poem again in this style, though he later did develop another style from this, and the result, through long evolution from Errantry, was Eärendil

Eärendil

Eärendil the Mariner is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He is depicted in The Silmarillion as a great seafarer who, on his brow, carried the morning star across the sky.-Etymology:...

 the Mariner as published in The Fellowship of the Ring

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It takes place in the fictional universe Middle-earth. It was originally published on July 29, 1954 in the United Kingdom...

(cf Eärendil

Eärendil

Eärendil the Mariner is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He is depicted in The Silmarillion as a great seafarer who, on his brow, carried the morning star across the sky.-Etymology:...

).

This poem was set to music by Donald Swann

Donald Swann

Donald Ibrahím Swann was a British composer, musician and entertainer. He is best known to the general public for his partnership of writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders .-Life:...

. The sheet music and an audio recording are part of the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On

The Road Goes Ever On

The Road Goes Ever On is a song cycle that has been published as sheet music and as an audio recording. The music was written by Donald Swann, and the words are taken from poems in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings.The title of this opus is taken from "The...

.

Errantry later came to be categorised as a Hobbit

Hobbit

Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...

 poem from Middle-earth

Middle-earth

Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....

.

Errantry perfectly fits the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

's I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General

Major-General's Song

I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General is a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. It is perhaps the most famous song in Gilbert and Sullivan's operas. It is sung by Major-General Stanley at his first entrance, towards the end of Act I...

.

Extract

Two quartets, with end-of-line assonances coloured yellow and end-and-beginning assonances coloured teal.

"He battled with the ,

the , and ,

and won the Golden ,

and on ,

in ship of leaves and ,

with a ,

he sat and sang, and ,

and his ."