July’s poem

… is my favorite in The Lord of the Rings, so far.
“What are you, I wonder? [said Treebeard.] I cannot place you. You do not seem to come in the old lists that I learned when I was young. But that was a long, long time ago, and they may have made new lists. Let me see! Let me see! How did it go?

Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!
First name the four, the free peoples:
Eldest of all, the elf-children;
Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses;
Ent the earthborn, old as mountains;
Man the mortal, master of horses:

Hm, hm, hm.

Beaver the builder, buck the leaper,
Bear bee-hunter, boar the fighter;
Hound is hungry, hare is fearful …

hm, hm.

Eagle in eyrie, ox in pasture,
Hart horn-crownéd; hawk is swiftest,
Swan the whitest, serpent coldest …

Hoom, hm; hoom, hm, how did it go? Room tum, room tum, roomty toom tum. It was a long list. But anyway you do not seem to fit in anywhere!”

“We always seem to have got left out of the old lists, and the old stories,” said Merry. “Yet we’ve been about for quite a long time. We’re hobbits.”

“Why not make a new line?” said Pippin.

“Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers.

Put us in amongst the four, next to Man (the Big People) and you’ve got it.”

“Hm! Not bad, not bad,” said Treebeard. “That would do. So you live in holes, eh? It sounds very right and proper. … ”
The book perks up whenever Merry and, especially, Pippin come onto the scene.

I now rank the characters by how pleasing (and painless) they are to listen to.
  1. Hobbits
  2. Ents
  3. Galadriel
  4. Gandalf
  5. Aragorn (as “Strider”)
  6. Legolas
  7. Gimli
  8. Other wizards
  9. Aragorn (as warrior-king)
  10. Orcs
  11. Other men
  12. Other elves
  13. Tom Bombadil
(I haven’t gotten to Sméagol yet.)

Who is the “Green Man” in this story? Is it Treebeard, Tom Bombadil, or both?

I also am reading the appendices, 3 pp./day. They go like this:

Slog slog slog WOW slog slog COOL slog WOW …