The Road Goes Ever On (song)

Illustration of the road by Kay Nielsen for the 1914 fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, whose title Tolkien uses in one of his walking songs for Aman, the desired other world.[1]

"The Road Goes Ever On" is a title that encompasses several walking songs that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote for his Middle-earth legendarium. Within the stories, the original song was composed by Bilbo Baggins and recorded in The Hobbit. Different versions of it also appear in The Lord of the Rings, along with some similar walking songs.

Scholars have noted that Tolkien's road is a plain enough symbol for life and its possibilities, and that Middle-earth is a world of such roads, as both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings begin and end at the door of Bag End, Bilbo's home. They have observed, too, that if "the lighted inn" on the road means death, then the road is life, and both the song and the novels can be read as speaking of the process of psychological individuation. The walking song gives its name to Donald Swann's 1967 song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On, where it is the first in the list. All the versions of the song have been set to music by the Tolkien Ensemble.

  1. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 324–328.