Sometimes your friend makes a joke about throwing a Silmaril into Lake Superior and then things escalate and you have to write a tragic ballad filk about the downfall of Númenor set to the tune of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, as you do.
Some lyrics will probably be tweaked but you can hear our first play-through of this version here on the recording of last night’s filk stream! (time stamp 29:00)
On these hither shores we forget
Númenor
Land of Star, Land
of Gift that was granted.
Now lost Westernesse
is called Akallabeth
In the tongue of the
Elves Atalante.
It was once bright
and fair, and the men who dwelt there
Knew arts that are
now lost and hidden
But they chafed at
the Ban and the Doom laid on man
That the Undying
Lands were forbidden.
King Al-Pharazôn
was both prideful and strong
And he thought there
was none could defeat him.
His force was so
great that he need only wait
Until Sauron came
humbly to meet him.
And indeed Sauron
came, acting subtle and tame
And condemning the
Ban for its harshness
And he fed wicked
things to the mind of the king
Till he worshipped
the Lord of the Darkness
The sky filled with
clouds and the thunder boomed loud
And the Eagles of
Manwe came flying
But the King took no
heed in his pride and his greed
And his fear that
too soon he’d be dying
As the great fleet
departed he hardened his heart
From his ship decked
with sable and golden
And they sailed to
the West to make war upon death
And the Ban of the
Valar was broken.
They came in a while
to the first Lonely Isle
Where their fleet
made the setting sun darken
And they reached the
fair strands the Undying Lands
Where even the king
paused and hearkened.
He wavered at last
and he nearly turned back
From the land and
the brink of disaster
But he strode on the
shore and so doomed
Númenor
For in the end pride
was his master.
The ocean was split
with a cavernous rift
And the whole world
of Arda was shaken
As the sky wheeled
and raged o’er devouring waves
They knew that their
land was forsaken.
Its gardens and
halls and its riches and tombs
Are drowned far
beneath the deep waters
With its music and
mirth and its wisdom and lore
And its wives and
its sons and its daughters.
Elendil alone with
his sons’ ships was blown
Far away from the
wrack and the ruin
He was faithful
through all and ignored the king’s call
So escaped
Pharazôn’s swift
undoing.
They were tossed on
the strand of the still-risen land
With masts snapped
and hearts full of mourning
Though their
kingdoms grew strong they would never move on
From their grief for
the land they were born in.
The world has been
rent and all roads are now bent
And the Undying
Lands have been hidden
So that never again
may the folly of Men
Let them seek after
Aman unbidden.
And on these hither
shores we forget
Númenor,
But sometimes when
the seabirds are calling
We may look to the
West and with grief in our breasts
Weep for Akallabeth
the Downfallen.