In my readings on Tolkien I’ve been pleased to discover another supernatural lyric narrative poem from the Midlands, which in time and spirit seems to sit alongside Gawain and the Green Knight on which I recently wrote a book. The “Man in the Moon” lyric is from the Harley MS. 2253, also known as “The Harley Lyrics”. The best authorities say this performative verse is from “a single scribe working in Ludlow, south Shropshire” (now in Shropshire) and must have been written by a scribe who was active c. 1314 to c. 1349. Which puts it about a generation before Gawain, and in a similarly liminal border-place in the Western Midlands. A touch of Welsh, apparently detectable in a few words, also pins it to the English fringe of the Welsh Marches. It thus has the same difficulty of language and translation that Gawain has, but is just as lively. It has the Man in The Moon coming down to earth, and behaving in a strange ‘alien from the stars’ manner, and thus in a way it’s sort of weird ‘proto science-fiction’. I’ve made a free translation of it that some may enjoy.

This post is now superseded by the new fuller version The Man in the Moon 3.0