Idiosophy

A physicist loose among the liberal arts

Alliteration: not just for good guys anymore

Just watched “The Rings of Power” episode 6. About four minutes in, Adar is giving his troops an inspirational speech. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it sounds like he’s trying for alliterative verse. I was scribbling as fast as I can, but this is pretty close to what he said:

We cast off our shackles,  crossed mountain and field,
Frost and fallow, till   our feet bloodied the dirt.
From Ered Mithrin to the Ephel Arnen,  we have endured

Oops — mistake there at the end. (“Overcome” would have worked.) I guess when you’ve been warped by the evils of Morgoth, one of the first things you lose is strict adherence to poetic form.

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2 Comments

  1. It’s not strict alliterative form, but I think “endured” here is an alliterative call-back to “dirt.” It’s an end-of-line repetition of D.

    ‘We cast off our shackles, crossed mountain, field, frost and fallow, ’till our feet bloodied the dirt. From Ered Mithrin to the Ephel Arnen, we have endured. Yet tonight, one more trial awaits us. Our enemy may be weak, their numbers meager, yet before this night is through, some of us will fall. But for the first time, you do so not as unnamed slaves in far away lands, but as brothers. As brothers and sisters in our home!’

    He

    • Joe

      So the line is both mis-alliterated and a botched rhyme. The destruction wrought by the Enemy knows no bounds!

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