Coronavirus chronicles: Errantry cakes?

[lblanchard]

Errantry, calligraphy by J. R. R. Tolkien
https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/painting/calligraphy/calligraphies/elvish-script-01.html
Lots more at the link

I am going to bake cookies or little cakes based on ingredients in a Tolkien poem. But first, a little backstory:

The backstory is in fact the story of what got me going on the whole Tolkien/Swann song cycle. We were out back watching the bumblebees bumble along in the wisteria and I said, Oh, look, a Dumbledore." Roy said "???????" so I told him it was an archaic word for bumblebee. "?????," he said, so I whipped out my phone and Googled "Dumbledore bee." One of the first hits was to a YouTube video of Errantry. A little more Googling and I found the text of the poem, which excited me in the same way that fine needlework or miniature painting does -- intricacy of rhyme and scansion. According to Wikipedia, Tolkien invented this rhyme scheme, which was so fiendishly difficult to compose in that he never tried it again. I understand that it can also be sung to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern major-general."

The text of the full poem is here: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Errantry

Independently of my interest in the song cycle -- or maybe not, who knows how the mind works? -- a week or so ago I developed a hankering to play with cardamom as a spice variant for my spent sourdough applesauce cake. Side note: a cardamom/orange oil flavor palette turns out to be quite tasty, especially when the cake is topped with vanilla yogurt and a dollop of marmalade.

But back to Errantry. I played the Elvin/Swann cycle the other day and this time the word "cardamom" jumped out at me. In the first stanza he stocks his gondola:

a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.

Later, after battling with the dumbledors, the hummerhorns, and honeybees, he returns with honeycomb.

So I am meditating on some kind of porridge-y honeycake infused with orange peel and oil, marjoram, cardamom, and lavender. I wonder if I'll like it. More to the point, I wonder if Roy will like it.

Errantry, composed and played by Donald Swann and sung by William Elvin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye53tRTq_jk&list=PLyXYyeDNdJ1V4AGF7taf9xDzlOWOIzSse&index=5

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

This recipe, substituting cardamom etc for cinnamon, looks to be perfect.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/25591/honey-cake-iii/?printview

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

The poem/song is genius!

And the cake you reference look simple and very good indeed. I might retain the original cinnamon though...we are not huge fans of cardamom though it might be interesting. Hmmm...maybe do tow for comparison?

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

There’s no cinnamon in the poem, though...

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Heh. I know. And this is a poem-loyal cake!

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Full text of the poem (a massive copyright violation so I better take this post friends-only):

There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.

He called the winds of argosies
with cargoes in to carry him
across the rivers seventeen
that lay between to tarry him.
He landed all in loneliness
where stonily the pebbles on
the running river Derrilyn
goes merrily for ever on.
He journeyed then through meadow-lands
to Shadow-land that dreary lay,
and under hill and over hill
went roving still a weary way.

He sat and sang a melody,
his errantry a-tarrying;
he begged a pretty butterfly
that fluttered by to marry him.
She scorned him and she scoffed at him,
she laughed at him unpitying;
so long he studied wizardry
and sigaldry and smithying.

He wove a tissue airy-thin
to snare her in; to follow her
he made him beetle-leather wing
and feather wing of swallow hair.
He caught her in bewilderment
with filament of spider-thread;
He made her soft pavilions
of lilies, and a bridal bed
of flowers and of thistle-down
to nestle down and rest her in;
and silken webs of filmy white
and silver light he dressed her in.

He threaded gems and necklaces,
but recklessly she squandered them
and fell to bitter quarrelling;
then sorrowing he wandered on,
and there he left her withering,
as shivering he fled away;
with windy weather following
on swallow-wing he sped away.

He passed the archipelagoes
where yellow grows the marigold,
where countless silver fountains are,
and mountains are of fairy-gold.
He took to war and foraying,
a harrying beyond the sea,
and roaming over Belmarie
and Thellamie and Fantasie.

He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory,
a sword he made of emerald,
and terrible his rivalry
with elven-knights of Aerie
and Faerie, with paladins
that golden-haired and shining-eyed
came riding by and challenged him.

Of crystal was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
with silver tipped at plenilune
his spear was hewn of ebony.
His javelins where of malachite
and stalactite - he brandished them,
and went and fought the dragon-flies
of Paradise, and vanquished them.

He battled with the Dumbledors,
the Hummerhorns, and Honeybees,
and won the Golden Honeycomb;
and running home on sunny seas
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he sat and sang, and furbished up
and burnished up his panoply.

He tarried for a little while
in little isles that lonely lay,
and found there naught but blowing grass.
And so at last the only way
he took, and turned, and coming home with
honeycomb, to memory
his message came, and errand too!
In derring-do and glamoury
he had forgot them, journeying
and tourneying, a wanderer.

So now he must depart again
and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger,
a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does,
a weather-driven mariner.