The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

A major source for the poem has been identified as the Breton song 'An Aotrou Nann hag ar Gorigann' (Lord Nann and the Fairy), which Tolkien probably knew through Wimberly's Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads (1928).[1] Tolkien adds to his source a stern moral - repudiation of all traffic with the supernatural.[2]

In the poem, Aotrou and Itroun are a couple of Breton nobility. They are childless, and Aotrou seeks the help of a witch. When Itroun is with child, the witch reappears, revealing herself as the Corrigan, and asks for Aotrou's love as payment. Aotrou sacrifices his knightly honour to Christian values, and breaks his word.

"I gave no love. My love is wed;

my wife now lieth in child-bed,

and I curse the beast that cheated me

and drew me to this dell to thee."

Cursed by the Corrigan to die in three days, Aotrou takes the consequences and places his trust in Providence:

In three days I shall live at ease

and die but when it God doth please

in eld, or in some time to come

in the brave wars of Christendom.

Aotrou died after three days, followed by his wife with a broken heart. They are buried together, and they do not live to see their offspring grow up - something that has been interpreted as a judgement on Aotrou for excessive family pride.[3]

The lay was originally published in The Welsh Review in 1945 but had been unavailable for decades. A book form, edited by the Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, was published in 2016.

• Gwyn Jones
• List of poems by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Melusine

• A. Lewis ed., Leaves from the Tree (1991)
• T. Keightly, The Fairy Mythology (1878)