The Nature of Middle-earth

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  The base *ñal- fell out of use in Quenya, surviving only in the derivatives ñalda ‘bright, polished’, and angal ‘a mirror’ from *aññala (cf. Angal-limpe ‘Mirrormere’).[9] There was no Quenya form of C.E. *ñalatā (it would have been *ñalta).

  These names were later given a Sindarin form in Middle-earth. This presented no difficulty, and the names became naturally Galadriel and Celeborn. But when later Celeborn and Galadriel became the rulers of the Elves of Lórien (who were mainly in origin Silvan Elves and called themselves the Galaðrim) the name of Galadriel became associated with trees, an association that was aided by the name of her husband, Celeborn, which also appeared to contain a tree-word (his name was however in fact derived from *ornā ‘upraised, high, tall’, of stature),[10] so that outside Lórien among those whose memories of the ancient days and Galadriel’s history had grown dim her name was often altered to Galaðriel. Not in Lórien itself.[11]

  There follow the passages excerpted at UT:256–7; one of these was paraphrased by Christopher Tolkien, and it reads:

  and after the first arising of Barad-dûr and in the long wars against Sauron in the Second Age they became much diminished and hid themselves in fastnesses of Greenwood the Great (as it was still called): small and scattered peoples, hardly to be distinguished from Avari.

  Following this excerpt, the text continues with passages likewise paraphrased by Christopher at UT:253 n.5, 267. I give them here in full.

  Lórien is probably an alteration of an older name now lost. It is actually the Quenya name of a region in Valinor, often also used as the name of the Vala to whom it belonged: it was a place of rest and shadowy trees and fountains, a retreat from cares and griefs. The resemblance cannot be accidental. The alteration of the older name may well have been due to Galadriel herself. As may be seen generally, and especially in her song (I 389),[12] she had endeavoured to make Lórien a refuge and an island of peace and beauty, a memorial of ancient days, but was now filled with regret and misgiving, knowing that the golden dream was hastening to a grey awakening. It may be noted that Treebeard (II 70)[13] interprets Loth-lórien as ‘Dreamflower’.

  A Gondorian commentator states that the older name was Lawarind. He names no authority; but it seems likely. It probably contains the C.E. stem *(g)lawar- ‘golden light’, and is a derivative that in Quenya form would be *laware-nde > laurende (with the suffix frequent in place-names): cf. Q. laure, S. glawar, T. glavare. The reference was to the mallorn-trees. Treebeard also says that the earlier name given by the Elves was Laurelindórenan. This is very likely a composition in Treebeard’s manner of Laurelinde-nan(do), and Laure-ndóre, both Quenya names and probably also due to Galadriel. The second contains -ndor ‘land’; the first is assimilated to Laure-linde (meaning more or less ‘singing gold’), the name of the Golden Tree of Valinor. Both are easily taken as based on *lawarind and alterations of it to resemble the names of Valinor, for which Galadriel’s yearning had increased as the years passed to an overwhelming regret. Lórien was the name most used since in form it could be Sindarin.[14]

  The element -nan ‘valley’ was derived from C.E. base NAD ‘hollow’ of structures or natural features more or less concave with rising sides.[fn2] In Sindarin this gave nand which as other words ending in nd remained in stressed monosyllables but > nann > nan in compounds.[15]

  Galadhon, only in Caras Galadhon, which evidently meant ‘Fortress of the Trees’; but the word caras is not found in Sindarin: it may derive from the same Silvan dialect as the reported name Lawarind, and be related to Q. caraxë, applied to a defensive earth wall surmounted by sharp stakes or standing stones; though in Caras Galadhon the palisade had disappeared and only the deep moat remained outside the great wall reinforced by stone. The adjectival/genitival -on is not Sindarin,[16] and was probably taken over from the older Silvan name of what was no doubt originally a much more primitive structure, though the first element was Sindarized – the tree word was probably still recognizable as a descendant of C.E. *galada (Q. alda, T. galada, S. galað).

  XVII

  SILVAN ELVES AND SILVAN ELVISH

  The two texts presented here are both late typescripts, occupying sides (six and six, respectively) of printed Allen & Unwin notices dated 1968. The first of these is evidently closely associated with texts published in Unfinished Tales as The Disaster of the Gladden Fields, Cirion and Eorl, and The History of Galadriel and Celeborn; as well as the texts presented just above as chap. XVI, “Galadriel and Celeborn”. The first text itself makes explicit reference to the first and second of those UT texts, and Christopher Tolkien quotes portions of it in the latter of these (UT:257–9). The second text arose in conjunction with that given as The Problem of Ros in The Peoples of Middle-earth, and is excerpted from a longer discussion of Silvan Elvish, with particular focus on the etymology of the name Amroth; its discussion of S. rath ‘climb’ and its connection with Amroth was referenced in UT:255 n.16.

  TEXT 1

  Nomenclature

  Silvan Elvish (SE), and names recorded as being derived from (dialects of) that language.

  This language was evidently related to Sindarin; but its characteristics have not been defined. For (as may be supposed) little information is available, beyond a few personal names and place names. The Wood-elves played a valiant part in the War of the Ring, but appear to have given no assistance in the ancient War of the Three Jewels.[1]

  In the fragmentary survivals of the legends of the Great Journey there are mentions of several secessions from the march, either by accident (some small parties lost their way) or by deliberate abandonment of the journey through weariness and loss of hope. For the most part these secessions were made by groups of the Lindar, the most numerous of the Eldar, who had been the most reluctant to leave their ancient home, and marched more slowly westward, always in the rear.[fn1] [2] The Eldar of Ossiriand, the Green Elves, though wood-dwellers, were of quite different origin, which does not here concern us; they were probably in origin of Noldorin kinship.[3] The Wood-elves of the time of the War of the Ring appear to have been those Teleri and their descendants who were dismayed by the Hithaeglir or Misty Mountains[fn2] and abandoning the march settled in the then greater and denser forests between the Anduin and the mountains, in the region in later days bounded north and south by the rivers Gladden and Limlight.[4] How the Eldar had crossed the Anduin is not told,[5] but the legends appear to describe that river as very different from its later shape in that region: wider and slower and forming great lakes at intervals in what were afterward the grassy lands of the Vales of Anduin. Such land would be attractive to the Lindar, who from their earliest days had a greater love of water than the other kindreds, and had already devised small boats to row or sail on the lakes of their own land before the days of the Great Journey. It was no doubt by their craft that eventually all three hosts reached the feet of the mountains and were faced by the labour and perils of finding ways through them. The legends speak of a sojourn of many years and long debates before the Vanyar and Noldor after long exploration began the crossing “by the pass under the Red Mountain”.[fn3] They were followed by some two-thirds of the Teleri. A third, mainly belonging to the folk of Olwë, had become during the delay well contented, and remained behind. There was no contact between these Silvan Elves and the Grey Elves, the Sindar, who in the event also remained in Middle-earth and never crossed the Great Sea, until the Second Age and the ruin of Beleriand. In Mannish terms that was a time as long maybe as all the years that now lie between us and the War of the Ring.[6] Any tongues of Men, however close akin, would in such a time have diverged beyond recognition. It was not so with the Elvish languages. They changed indeed, in Middle-earth at any rate, in much the same ways as do our languages, but much more slowly. For as Elvish sight and hearing were limited in range as ours are, and yet were keener and of greater range, so were their memories of things seen and heard. In the First Age after the end of the Great Journey, in a thousand years the unheeded change in the
speech of the Elves that remained “on the hither shores”, that is in Middle-earth, was no more than in two generations of Men.[fn4] Thus, although the dialects of the Silvan Elves, when they again met their long separated kindred, had so far diverged from Sindarin as to be hardly intelligible, little study was needed to reveal their kinship as Eldarin tongues.[fn5] Though the comparison of the Silvan dialects with their own speech greatly interested the loremasters, especially those of Noldorin origin, little is now known of the Silvan Elvish. The Silvan Elves had invented no forms of writing, and those who learned this art from the Sindar wrote in Sindarin as well as they could. By the end of the Third Age the Silvan tongues had probably ceased to be spoken in the two regions that had importance at the time of the War of the Ring: Lórien and the realm of Thranduil in northern Mirkwood. All that survived of them in the records was a few words and several names of persons and places.[7]

  Those names that are Elvish (at least in form) in the North East may naturally be supposed to have been originally devised in the Silvan tongue of Thranduil’s realm, which had extended into the woods surrounding the Lonely Mountain, before the coming of the Dwarves in exile from Moria, and the invasions of the Dragons of the far North. The Elvish folk of this realm had migrated from the south, being the kin and neighbours of the Elves of Lórien, but they had dwelt east of Anduin. Their movement had at first been slow, and they had for a long time remained in contact with their kin west of the river. Their unrest did not begin until the Third Age. They had been little concerned in the wars of the Second Age; but in that age they had grown to a numerous people, and their king Oropher[fn6] led a great host to join Gilgalad in the Last Alliance; but he was slain and many of his following in the first assault upon Mordor.[8] Afterwards they lived in peace, until a thousand years of the Third Age had passed. Then as they said a Shadow fell upon Greenwood the Great and they retreated before it as it spread ever northward, until at last Thranduil established his realm in the North-east of the forest and delved there a fortress and great halls underground.[fn7], [9] Maybe now more than 500 years had passed between the loss of all communication between Thranduil’s folk and their southern kindred before disaster befell Lórien and their last king, Amroth, was lost. In that time their Silvan tongue would have suffered no perceptible changes.

  The text ends, or at any rate is interrupted, here, near the top of the page and above a large empty space.[10] However, starting at the top of the next page, which Tolkien numbered continuously with this one, is typescript text that, if not exactly continuous with the foregoing – it is disjoint with the preceding passage and partially repetitive of the text, as for example in the stated motive of Oropher’s withdrawal northwards – is clearly contemporary with it, and may represent a partial reconsideration and redirecting of its course.[11] Long extracts from its beginning are quoted in Unfinished Tales (pp. 258–9), as indicated.

  In the records of the Third Age all that remains of the Silvan language is a few local words and several names of persons and places. These are mostly derived from Lórien; but the names that are Elvish in form found in the Northeast must have originally been devised in the Silvan tongue of King Thranduil’s realm, which had extended into the woods surrounding the Lonely Mountain and growing along the west shores of the Long Lake, before the coming of the Dwarves exiled from Moria and the invasion of the dragon.

  The latter half of this sentence and several subsequent paragraphs are published at UT:258–9. Following this lengthy excerpt, the text continues:

  [Thranduil] had not long returned when the disaster of the Gladden Fields occurred. When he retreated from the War in the first year of the Third Age he heard ill news: the Orks of the north regions of the Misty Mountains had also multiplied and spread southwards and many had crossed the Anduin and were infesting the eaves of Greenwood.

  The history of the Orks is naturally obscure and whence these Orks had come is not known. In the final destruction of Thangorodrim and the casting out of Morgoth, their begetter, those in his immediate service had been destroyed, though no doubt some escaped and fled east into hiding. But in the Second Age Sauron, when he turned back to evil, had gathered to his service all the Orks that were scattered far and wide in the Northern world, cowed and masterless, furtive lurkers in dark places. He rekindled the lusts of their black hearts; and to some he showed favour and fed them lavishly, breeding and training them into tribes of strong and cruel warriors.

  In the Second Age the presence of the lesser and more furtive Orks in the mountains between Carn Dûm and the Ettenmoors had long been known to the Elves and the Dúnedain; but they were not yet much troubled by them.[12] These Orks feared the Elves and fled from them; and they did not dare to approach the dwellings of Men or to assail them on their journeys, unless a lone man or a few rash adventurers strayed near their hiding places. But things had changed. While the greater part of the strength of Elves and Men had been drawn away south to the war with Mordor, they had become more bold and their scattered tribes had become leagued together and had dug a deep stronghold beneath Mount Gundabad. Slowly they were creeping southward.

  But these Orks could not have caused the disaster of the Gladden Fields; they would not have dared even to show themselves to Isildur. For though he was marching north with only a small company, maybe no more than two hundreds,[fn8], [13] they were his picked bodyguard, tall knights of the Dúnedain, war-hardened, grim and fully armed.[14] There can be no doubt that Sauron, well informed of the Alliance and the gathering of great forces to assail him, had sent out such troops of Orks as

  Here the text breaks off, midsentence and at the bottom of a page. At this break, in the bottom margin, Tolkien later wrote: “Continued in Disaster of the G[ladden] F[ields]”.[15]

  TEXT 2

  In L.R. I 355[16] Legolas speaks of this custom [dwelling in trees] as if it was universal among the Galadhrim of Lórien, and was used “even before the Shadow came”,[fn9] but it was not in fact a habit of the Silvan Elves in general. It was developed in Lórien by the nature and situation of the land: a flat land with no good stone, except what might be quarried in the mountains westward and brought with difficulty down the Celebrant.[fn10] Its chief wealth was in its trees, a remnant of the great forests of the Elder Days, of which the chief were the great mellyrn (‘golden-trees’) of vast girth and immense height. East and west the land was bounded by the Anduin and by the mountains, but it had no clearly defined borders northward and southward.

  The text continues with the excerpt given at UT:260–1, resuming with:

  But in the later days of which we speak Lórien had been a land of uneasy vigilance. The dwelling in trees was not universal. The telain or ‘flets’ were in origin either refuges in trees to be used in cases of attack or invasion, or most often (especially those high up in great trees) outlook posts from which the land and its borders could be surveyed by Elvish eyes. Such an outlook post, used by the wardens of the north marches, was the flet in which Frodo spent the night. The abode of Celeborn in Caras Galadon was also of the same origin: its highest flet, which the Fellowship of the Ring did not see, was the highest point in the land. Earlier the great flet of Amroth at the top of the great mound or hill of Cerin Amroth (piled by the labour of many hands) had been the highest, and was principally designed to watch Dol Guldur across the Anduin. The conversion of these telain into permanent dwellings was a later development, and only in Caras Galadon were such dwellings numerous. But Caras Galadon was itself a fortress, and only a small part of the Galadhrim dwelt within its walls. Living in such lofty houses was no doubt at first thought remarkable, and Amroth was probably the first to do so.[fn11] It is thus from his living in a high talan that his name – the only one that was later remembered in legend – was most probably derived.

  If so it is connected with a stem RATH meaning ‘climb’ – with hands and feet, as in a tree or up a rocky slope. This is recorded in Quenya only in raþillo (rasillo) ‘squirrel’ and rantala ‘ladder’ (< *ranthl�
�).[17] In Lindarin rath- was still the stem of a normal “strong” verb ‘to climb’; a (professional or habitual) climber was rathumo, but in compounds the agental form was -rathō, as in orotrātho ‘mountain-climber’. In Sindarin, clearly connected derivatives are not found.[18]

  Both Quenya and Lindarin also possessed a word ratta, which might be a derivative (by lengthening the medial consonant, a frequent device in Primitive Eldarin) from either *rattha or *ratta from the stem RAT,[fn12] 19] and in senses seems to be a blend of both. It meant ‘a track’; though often applied to ways known to mountaineers, to passes in the mountains and the climbing ways to them, it was not confined to ascents. It could be used of tracks across a marshland, or trails (blazed or sometimes marked by guide-stones) in forests. This is evidently the origin also of S. rath, the short vowel of which shows that it had a double consonant medially and was not derived from a simple form of RAT such as *rathā. It had the same senses as Q., L. ratta, though in mountainous country it was most used of climbing ways. In Minas Tirith, in the Númenórean Sindarin that was used in Gondor for the nomenclature of places, rath had become virtually equivalent to ‘street’, being applied to nearly all the paved ways within the city. Most of these were on an incline, often steep.