| Poems by J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| "There was an old priest naméd Francis" | |
|---|---|
| Poem Information | |
| Written | 8 August of 1904 |
| Published | Beyond Bree, October 2020, Beyond Bree, November 2020, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Subject(s) | Francis Xavier Morgan |
"There was an old priest naméd Francis"[1] is the first line of a limerick written by J.R.R. Tolkien as part of a letter to Francis Xavier Morgan on 8 August of 1904.[2]
Poem
There was an old priest naméd Francis
Who was so fond of 'cheefongy dances'
That he sat up too late
And worried his pate
Arranging these Frenchified Prances.[1]
Background
On 8 August, 1904, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a limerick about Francis Xavier Morgan at the end of "a three-page pictorial code letter"[3] sent to the priest.[3] The limerick, along with the letter, is kept "in the Tolkien Collection"[4] at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.[2] The limerick, along with the letter, was published for the first time in the Beyond Bree issue for October 2020, together with a commentary by Denis Bridoux.[5] In their commentary, Bridoux suggested "that cheefongy may be a reference to chiffon, a light, diaphanous fabric, and that the word 'Frenchified' may be an early example of the aversion to things French Tolkien expressed much later in life"[1].[6] Bridoux's[6] speculation about the term cheefongy was confirmed by Mark Hooker as "a dialect word for 'chiffon'"[1] in the Beyond Bree issue for November the same year.[7] Hooker also "pointed out that in the first part of 1904 the expatriate avant-garde dancer Loïe Fuller was captivating audiences, including one in Birmingham where Tolkien lived, with her renowned 'Radiance Dance'"[1], which could be related to "cheefongy dances" and "Frenchified Prances".[7] In September of 2024, the poem was reprinted in Appendix I in The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, where Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull suggest in their commentary that Tolkien's "aversion to things French" may have been exaggerated.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 J.R.R. Tolkien; Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond (eds.), The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, "Appendix I. Limericks and Clerihews", "Limericks", pp. 1365-6
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The AB Language Lives" by Arne Zettersten in The Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: Drawings and Original Manuscripts from the Marquette University Collection (2004)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (2006), The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: I. Chronology, p. 10 (entry "8 August 1904")
- ↑ Marco Graziosi, "Tolkien’s Nevbosh Limerick" 17 June 2014, A Blog of Bosh - Edward Lear and Nonsense Literature, accessed 31 December 2025
- ↑ Jeremy Edmonds, "Tolkien's 1904 Rebus letter to Father Morgan" 14 October 2020, Tolkien Collector's Guide, accessed 29 October 2020
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Letting Images Speak for Themselves: Tolkien's Rebus Letter to Fr. Francis Morgan, August 8, 1904" by Denis Bridoux in Beyond Bree, October 2020, pp. 1–2
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Annotated Transcription of Tolkien's 1904 Rebus Letter to Fr. Francis" by Mark Hooker in Beyond Bree, November 2020, pp. 2–5