Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold

I recently started reading The Hobbit aloud to my children, ages 12, 10, 6, and 5 months. To my surprise, they all love it! From the eldest that reads herself for hours every day to the baby, they sit in complete attention for an hour at a time.

When I got to the song the dwarves sing at Bag End, I went ahead and sang it too, just improvising the melody. I quickly got the hang of it, singing in a deep baritone. Although it took about five minutes to sing through, my kids all loved it.

Tolkien’s Inspiration

J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature and poetry. Besides The Lord of the Rings, his most famous works are translations of Beowulf and similar works. Instead of a focus on rhyme, Tolkien’s poetry adopts the Anglo-Saxon approach of using alliteration and rhythm in his poems.

This song, Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold, is sung by the dwarves in remembrance of the mining and hammering they had done under The Lonely Mountain. It sets up the reason they will travel across the world to challenge the dragon, Smaug. I thought it was very appropriate for this song to lean into that rhythmic nature of Anglo-Saxon poetry as well as the rhythmic nature of hammering. But it couldn’t be a march — this is a somber song.

My other thought is that this was being sung by 13 men, which reminds me of monastic choir chanting. The song should be low and slow. All 10 verses repeating the same melody would give it a chanting feel.

My Arrangement

I do not know how intentional I was about Tolkien’s and my inspiration as I improvised the song for my children. But it must have been a fair amount, because I love how it turned out.

I sat down at my piano later and plinked out what I figured I had sung. I knew it must have been in a minor key, and so I started in A minor to simplify it. Once I had the melody, I figured out the chords that went along. Now I was surprised that I had ended up with a I – IV – V progression, the most common in modern music. I’m not so proficient as to do this intentionally; I guess it is just what sounds good.

The most interesting part was that I chose to conclude each verse with what I now identify as a minor third, moving back to the I chord. This keeps the song from every quite resolving; quite appropriate given the nature of this song to begin the adventure, not end it!

Later I transposed it to where it was more comfortable to sing, while sounding more dwarvish. If you’d like, you can have the music notation for my arrangement (PDF). You can find all 10 verses at Tolkien Gateway.