[piosenniel]

Somehow her hand kept dipping into her purse, and somehow the bottles of wine kept appearing in the middle of the table . . . full bottles of wine. Had she been able to reason this out, Erkaliel might have thought that the incident with the Orcs had affected her more than she let on. She might have reasoned that dulling her senses with wine kept the memory of that fight, and others she had been in, at bay.

But to be honest, she was well into her cups by the time she realized that the familiar bottle near her hand was not magic, and had not filled itself of its own accord. And she was certainly beyond reasoning causes for her behavior or even that she should stop drinking at this point.

Firiel was there at her table, and drank a little, as did Rostion. Imthôlion drank none at all, but simply sat picking a piece of stale bread to pieces. And Dunaire sat by himself, wrapped in his cloak and in his thoughts, impregnable. Tanroth was busy with the last spoonfuls of soup. The others she could not see, supposing that they had all gone up to rest.

‘I should get up and go rest,’ she thought hazily to herself. ‘But you’re not really sleepy!’ came another part of her mind. Instead, much to the chagrin of her tablemates, and of Tanroth, who did not wish to call undue attention to their group, Erkaliel stood up from her chair, supporting herself on the edge of the table and grabbed the bottle of wine by the neck. To the horror of the others sitting about her, she clambered quite clumsily to the table top, standing there unsteadily for a moment, trying to get her balance.

Steadiness of a sort achieved, she grinned round the room and clanked her knife blade on the bottle for attention. ‘I’ve a poem I should like to sing you,’ she said, ‘and none of the usual Elven claptrap either. Though I know my share of it.’ She poured herself another glass of wine and saluted her ‘audience’. ‘Now this one comes from a very fine Inn in Bree-land. The Prancing Pony by name. Sung by a fellow with a very fine voice, but I’ll try to do it justice.’ There were murmurs from her tablemates that perhaps she ought to climb down – but she just raised her glass to them and began to sing.

There is an Inn, a merry old Inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
One night to drink his fill.

She sang on about the stableman’s tipsy cat who played the fiddle; the landlord’s little dog who told jokes; and the horned cow who loved to dance.

The Man in the Moon was drinking deep,
and the cat began to wail;
A dish and a spoon on the table danced,
The cow in the garden madly pranced,
And the little dog chased his tail.

The Man in the Moon took another mug,
And then rolled beneath his chair;
And there he dozed and dreamed of ale,
Til in the sky the stars were pale,
And dawn was in the air.

More verses, then, on trying to get the poor Man on his way before the Sun tried to rise. How they rolled him out the door and up the hill and bundled him into his Moon-carriage, watching as the horses of the Moon carried him across the sky.

And finally,

The round Moon rolled behind the hill,
as the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes;
For though it was day, to her surprise
They all went back to bed!

There was a brief round of clapping as she came to the end, mostly from two old fellows at another table, who appeared as intoxicated as she. And they clapped again, even more loudly, calling out ‘Good show!’ as she fell in an ungraceful heap from the table . . .

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Poem excerpts from: The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late; J.R.R. Tolkien