Hey, I just thought I'd tack this chapter on to the poem so I can let my lovely reviewers know how much I appreciate their taking time to R&R to it! Thanks a million, guys, it's reviews that keep me going (and, like I said, I like getting good reviews, bad reviews, and anything in between).
Vass: Thanks for bringing that up. I just realized that I didn't explain what I meant by "Scottish" Ballad. In my Brit Lit class, we studied a few Scottish ballads (I feel horrible; I can't recall their names off the top of my head, but they were on the page after "The Seafarer" in our book) and then, when semester came around we had a choice of what sort of final project we could do, and one of the options was to write a ballad (we labeled it "Scottish" because that's what the ones we'd read had been) using the same structure as the poems we'd read in class, on whatever subject matter we wanted. As to what we studied in the class, we read a lot of literature written by folks from the British Isles (Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Le Morte D'Arthur, Macbeth, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, etc.), as well as studying the origins of the English language (from its Latin, Saxon, French, and Welsh roots) as well as a lot of the social structure of England throughout the years. My teacher was crazy about anything to do with the British Isles (particularly during the Medieval period), so we learned whatever he felt like teaching. The class was a bunch of fun, kind of a mixture of British Literature and history. Thanks for the review!
Patty: I'm glad that you liked it! My teacher did actually give us full credit, even though when we read it aloud for the class, it was supposed to have been memorized. We got lucky because, as it turns out, Sam is his favorite Lord of the Rings character. In his words, "Frodo is a wuss," and he thinks that Sam is highly underestimated by many fans, since he was the real reason why Frodo actually made it to mount doom. As to whether it generated any curiosity in my class, I doubt it. This was written about a month after the Return of the King movie came out in 2003, and everybody in the class knew me as one of those weird girls who likes Star Wars and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings even though she's "pretty enough to have a life" (not kidding, that's been said about me, to my face, by the kind of girls you saw on Mean Girls). I, on the other hand, am very glad that Lord of the Rings became popular enough during my ninth grade year that I worked up the curiosity to go and buy the books in preparation for the new movies. I was blown away by The Hobbit, and again by Rings, so I do enjoy getting lost for hours on end in Tolkien's books (I'm trying to read the Silmarillion now). Thanks for your kind review, and I hope to see you around FFN!
G: Thanks for your kind words! You didn't give me much to respond to, but I'm glad that you enjoyed the "chorus" of the poem (it was kind of tough to come up with four lines that could reflect Sam's character for his entire journey, but after much deliberation I came up with what's there, and I rather like it!). I rather liked that I could give Sam a little tip-of-the-hat (especially after Sean Astin's performance—wow!) and I'm really glad that you liked it too! Thanks for the review, and maybe I'll see you around!