Sceafa - King Sheave

King Sheave

J. R. R. Tolkien treated Sceaf in a poem "King Sheave" which was published after his death in "The Lost Road" in The Lost Road and Other Writings and very slightly revised and printed as prose in "The Notion Club Papers (Part Two)" in Sauron Defeated.

In Tolkien's treatment, a ship drifts to the land of the Longobards in the north. It beaches itself and the folk of that country enter and found a young and handsome boy with dark hair asleep with a "sheaf of corn" as his pillow and a harp beside him. The boy awoke the following day and sang a song in an unknown tongue which drove away all terror from the hearts of those who heard. They made the boy their king, crowning him with a garland of golden wheat. Tolkien's Sheave fathers seven sons from whence came the Danes, Goths, Swedes, Northmen, Franks, Frisians, Swordmen (Brongdingas?), Saxons, Swabes, English, and the Langobards.

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