Ann-thennath

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

There is an essay by Patrick Wynne and Carl Hostetter, "Three Elvish Verse Modes", that appeared in the collection Tolkien's Legendarium, that discusses Ann-thennath. Though we have almost no information about this verse form, they tease out several possibilities concerning it from the one example we have (Aragorn's song of Beren and Luthien) and from the name, which seems to mean something like "long-shorts" or "longs and shorts". They raise some interesting ideas, but ultimately we are limited by the fact that we don't know how closely the English translation of the song preserves whatever features define the mode. Still, you might want to read the Wynne-Hostetter essay if you can find it.

But look on the bright side: no-one can point the finger and say you did it wrong. Why not just emulate the fairly simple form of Aragorn's song, and not worry too much about whether it's "real" ann-thennath?