'Light as leaf of linden-tree': Chaucer, Langland, and Elven Poetry

I was browsing in the OED and MED the other day, as one does, and I decided, unsurprisingly, to see just how many times the OED quoted Tolkien. The search yielded 386 results distributed across 320 separate entries. So, for example, under 'orc' we find five quotes for 'orc' and its derivatives ('orc-guards', 'orc-speech', 'orc-host', 'orc-like'). I was scrolling through the list of entries to see where the quotes came from. As you would expect, The Lord of the Rings, The Letters, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion provide the most quotations.

One OED entry in particular caught my eye as it moved down the page:

c. (as) light as leaf on lind (also linden, tree, etc.)and variants: as light or weightless as a leaf; (hence) cheerful, merry; (also, in negative sense) heedless, unthinking. Now archaic and rare.

Readers of Tolkien will recognize this phrase of course from several places. The first is the song about Beren and Lúthien which Aragorn sings to the hobbits at Weathertop (FR 1.x.192):

He heard there oft the flying sound

   Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
   In hidden hollows quavering.

The second comes from the song of Nimrodel sung by Legolas in Lothlórien (FR 2.vi.339):

Her hair was long, her limbs were white,
   And fair she was and free;
And in the wind she went as light   
   As leaf of linden-tree.

The third comes from The Lay of the Children of Húrin (Lays 104), where Tolkien describes the movements of Lúthien as 'light as leaf on linden tree'. The phrase also serves as the title of a poem Tolkien published in 1925 in The Gryphon, a magazine put out by the University of Leeds, where he had been teaching since 1920. An early version of the song Aragorn sings in The Fellowship of the Ring, it was also inserted into The Lay of the Children of Húrin (Lays 108-110), which puts it in the remarkable position of being 72 lines of rhyming iambic tetrameter embedded within over 2,100 lines of unrhymed alliterative verse as in Beowulf. While in Beowulf and long before that in The Odyssey we encounter bards singing songs about the exploits of heroes, we don't get to hear the songs themselves. At best we are told what they sang about and how it affected those who heard it. So, 'Light as Leaf on Lindentree', indented, rhyming, and in an entirely different kind of verse from the surrounding lay really calls attention to itself. 

That Tolkien used variations of this phrase repeatedly, in different poems sung in different places by different characters, is even more striking because it seems to offer up this image as part of the poetic vocabulary of Middle-earth, and more specifically perhaps as part of the Elven poetic vocabulary. For the songs of Aragorn and Legolas are clearly identified as such, and 'Light as Leaf on Lindentree' is in the same meter as Aragorn's.

What's just as cool is that, in making the phrase part of the Elven poetic vocabulary, Tolkien is drawing on the Middle English poetic vocabulary of the 14th through the 16th Centuries. Not only does Chaucer use it in The Clerk's Tale and Langland in Piers Plowman, but it appears in works less well known, such as the Harley Lyrics and one of the Robin Hood ballads. The phrase then vanishes from the record in the 1500s, becoming archaic and rare as the OED tells us. I have to wonder if Tolkien's resurrection of this lovely simile after 400 years is the sole reason why the phrase is described as rare rather than obsolete. It may also be the sole recorded instance of the poetry of mortals influencing the poetry of Faërie.

See the quotes, links, and translations below, with approximate date, author if known, and title of work.

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a1350 In may hit murgeþ (Harley Lyrics 2253) In May hit murgeþ when hit dawes in dounes wiþ þis dueres plawes ent lef is lyght on lynde.

'In May it is merry when it dawns. So on the downs the animals play, And leaf is light on linden.'

c1390 (?c1350) Joseph of Arimathie 585: Þer nas no lynde so liht as þise two leodes, whon þei blencheden a-boue and eiþer seiʒ oþer. 

'There was no linden as light as these two people, when they grew pale and saw each other.

(c1395) Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, The Clerk's Tale E.1211: Be ay of cheere as light as leef on lynde.

'Be always of cheer as light as leaf on linden.'

c1400 (c1378) William Langland, Piers Plowman B 1.154: Whan it [love] haued of þis folde flesshe & blode taken, Was neuere leef vpon lynde liʒter þer-after. 

'When [love] had taken part of the flesh and blood of this world, never again was a leaf lighter upon linden after that.'

a1450 The Castle of Perseverance 3596: Lo here Mankynde, lyter þanne lef is on lynde!

'Behold mankind here, lighter than leaf is on linden!

c1450 The Chance of the Dice 104: So fers ys youre corage, Y russhen forthe as lyght as leefe on lynde. 

'So fierce is your courage, you rush forth as light as leaf on linden.'

?a1475 Lessons of the Dirige (2) 395: Than were I glad and lyght as lynde To haue Parce michi, domine. 

'Then were I glad and light as linden to have "Parce michi, domine."'

a1500(a1460) The Towneley Plays 97/368: A, what I am light as lynde! 

'Ah! I am as light as linden!'

a1500 Robin Hood & the Monk st.76: Robyn was in mery Scherwode, As liʒt as lef on lynde.

'Robin was in merry Sherwood, As light as leaf on linden.'