Аннотация
Preface
The Red Book contains a large number of verses. A few are included in the narrative of the Downfall of the Lord of the Rings, or in the attached stories and chronicles; many more are found on loose leaves, while some are written carelessly in margins and blank spaces. Of the last sort most are nonsense, now often unintelligible even when legible, or half-remembered fragments. From these marginalia are drawn Nos. 4, II, 13; though a better example of their general character would be the scribble, on the page recording Bilbo's When winter first begins to bite:
The wind so whirled a weathercockHe could not hold his tail up;The frost so nipped a throstlecockHe could not snap a snail up.'My case is hard' the throstle cried,And 'All is vane' the cock replied;And so they set their wail up.The present selection is taken from the older pieces, mainly concerned with legends and jests of the Shire at the end of the Third Age, that appear to have been made by H...
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