Death! Death! Death!

[fajrdrako]

I got this quiz from kikibug13, To which race of Middle Earth do you belong? I didn't quite get the result I expected. I was angling for Gondorian. This would be second best - and they quote my favourite passage of Tolkieneque Anglo-Saxon poetry.

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?

Rohirrim
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This gets me thinking of The Wanderer, which is my favourite bit of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and the only one I have memorized in the original (in part) from an old Caedmon record that was in the public library when I was a teen:

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?
Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu?

I had a translation that rendered this as¹:

Where is the horse now? Where the hero?
Where the treasure-giving prince?
...How that time has all passed away,
grown dark beneath night's helmet,
as though it never were.

- which I like a little better than the subsequent translations I have found, though I suppose it's a little looser than most. This source by Truesdell gives it as:

Where went the steed?
Where went the rider?
Where went the giver of treasure?...

I love it: the whole romance of the Anglo-Saxon world, where princes gave rings to warrior-heroes.

Yeah, I guess the Rohirrim might be the right place for me. Even if I was sort of dreaming of a Gondorian library of leather-bound books, with Romanesque arches overlooking a splendid vista...

¹ I wish I knew the translator's name, or could find that one again. I don't remember the rest of it.