J. Tolkien - The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

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*The Ragnarök is ‘the fate of the Powers’, ‘the doom of the Gods’ in the Norse mythology; assimilation to a distinct word rökr, meaning ‘dusk’, ‘twilight’, led to the interpretaion Götterdämmerung , the twilight of the Gods.

*My father thought it probable that the loss was due to robbery of the ‘Long Lay of Sigurd’ (see p.234), supposed to have been the chief constituent of the poetry in the lost gathering.

*A round figure! – rounded down, whether my father was counting from 1643 or 1663.

*To a full lift a value 4 may be given. The subordinate stresses (reduced in force and lowered in tone) that appear in such compounds as highcrèsted may be given value 2. But reduction also occurs in other cases. For instance, the second of two clashing stresses in a sentence; or of two juxtaposed words (of equal significance when separate), such as nouns and adjectives, tends to be reduced to approximate value 3. Using these rough values we see that the normal total value of each pattern is 10; C tends to be slightly lighter, and E to be slightly heavier.

†And so not purely phonetic, nor exactly measurable in figures (such as those used above) or by a machine.

*After the Völsungs my father wrote (the Chosen) , but struck this out. An etymological speculation on the origin of the name which (at any rate at one time) he favoured associated it with Germanic words meaning ‘choose’.

*In the Lay of the Völsungs Gunnar sang of the slaying of Budli’s brother by the Burgundians (VII.15); and the same is said in the Lay of Gudrún, stanza 4.

*For references and citations from volumes of The History of Middle-earth on this matter see The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996), pp.374–75; and for the entry in the Annals of Aman see Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp.71, 76.