Unfinished Tales
Page 35
12 On the Silvan Elves and their speech see Appendix A, p. 331.
13 See Appendix C, p. 337, on the boundaries of Lórien.
14 The origin of the name Dor-en-Ernil is nowhere given; its only other occurrence is on the large map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. On that map it is placed on the other side of the mountains from Dol Amroth, but its occurrence in the present context suggests that Ernil was the Prince of Dol Amroth (which might be supposed in any case).
15 See Appendix B, p. 333, on the Sindarin princes of the Silvan Elves.
16 The explanation supposes that the first element in the name Amroth is the same Elvish word as Quenya amba ‘up’, found also in Sindarin amon, a hill or mountain with steep sides; while the second element is a derivative from a stem rath- meaning ‘climb’ (whence also the noun rath, which in the Númenórean Sindarin used in Gondor in the naming of places and persons was applied to all the longer roadways and streets of Minas Tirith, nearly all of which were on an incline: so Rath Dínen, the Silent Street, leading down from the Citadel to the Tombs of the Kings).
17 In the ‘Brief Recounting’ of the legend of Amroth and Nimrodel it is said that Amroth dwelt in the trees of Cerin Amroth ‘because of his love for Nimrodel’ (p. 311).
18 The place of the Elvish haven in Belfalas is marked with the name Edhellond (‘Elf-haven’, see the Appendix to The Silmarillion under edhel and londë) on the decorated map of Middle-earth by Pauline Baynes; but I have found no other occurrence of this name. See Appendix D, p. 339. Cf. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), p. 8: ‘In the Langstrand and Dol Amroth there were many traditions of the ancient Elvish dwellings, and of the haven at the mouth of the Morthond from which “westward ships” had sailed as far back as the fall of Eregion in the Second Age.’
19 This chimes with the passage in The Fellewship of the Ring II 8, where Galadriel, giving the green stone to Aragorn, said: ‘In this hour take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!’
20 The text here and again immediately below has Finrod, which I have changed to Finarfin to avoid confusion. Before the revised edition of The Lord of the Rings was published in 1966 my father changed Finrod to Finarfin, while his son Felagund, previously called Inglor Felagund, became Finrod Felagund. Two passages in the Appendices B and F were accordingly emended for the revised edition. – It is noteworthy that Orodreth, King of Nargothrond after Finrod Felagund, is not here named by Galadriel among her brothers. For a reason unknown to me, my father displaced the second King of Nargothrond and made him a member of the same family in the next generation; but this and associated genealogical changes were never incorporated in the narratives of The Silmarillion.
21 Compare the description of the Elfstone in The Fellowship of the Ring II 8: ‘Then [Galadriel] lifted from her lap a great stone of a clear green, set in a silver brooch that was wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outspread wings; and as she held it up the gem flashed like the sun shining through the leaves of spring.’
22 But in The Return of the King VI 9, where the Blue Ring is seen on Elrond’s finger, it is called ‘Vilya, mightiest of the Three’.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
THE SILVAN ELVES AND THEIR SPEECH
According to The Silmarillion (p. 94) some of the Nandor, the Telerin Elves who abandoned the march of the Eldar on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains, ‘dwelt age-long in the woods of the Vale of the Great River’ (while others, it is said, went down Anduin to its mouths, and yet others entered Eriador: from these last came the Green-elves of Ossiriand).
In a late etymological discussion of the names Galadriel, Cele-born, and Lórien the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lórien are specifically declared to be descended from the Telerin Elves who remained in the Vale of Anduin:
The Silvan Elves (Tawarwaith) were in origin Teleri, and so remoter kin of the Sindar, though even longer separated from them than the Teleri of Valinor. They were descended from those of the Teleri who, on the Great Journey, were daunted by the Misty Mountains and lingered in the Vale of Anduin, and so never reached Beleriand or the Sea. They were thus closer akin to the Nandor (otherwise called the Green-elves) of Ossiriand, who eventually crossed the mountains and came at last into Beleriand.
The Silvan Elves hid themselves in woodland fastnesses beyond the Misty Mountains, and became small and scattered peoples, hardly to be distinguished from Avari;
but they still remembered that they were in origin Eldar, members of the Third Clan, and they welcomed those of the Noldor and especially the Sindar who did not pass over the Sea but migrated eastward [i.e. at the beginning of the Second Age]. Under the leadership of these they became again ordered folk and increased in wisdom. Thranduil father of Legolas of the Nine Walkers was Sindarin, and that tongue was used in his house, though not by all his folk.
In Lórien, where many of the people were Sindar in origin, or Noldor, survivors from Eregion [see p. 314], Sindarin had become the language of all the people. In what way their Sindarin differed from the forms of Beleriand – see The Fellowship of the Ring II 6, where Frodo reports that the speech of the Silvan folk that they used among themselves was unlike that of the West – is not of course now known. It probably differed in little more than what would now be popularly called ‘accent’: mainly differences of vowel-sounds and intonation sufficient to mislead one who, as Frodo, was not well acquainted with purer Sindarin. There may of course also have been some local words and other features ultimately due to the influence of the former Silvan tongue. Lórien had long been much isolated from the outside world. Certainly some names preserved from its past, such as Amroth and Nimrodel, cannot be fully explained from Sindarin, though fitting it in form. Caras seems to be an old word for a moated fortress, not found in Sindarin. Lórien is probably an alteration of an older name now lost [though earlier the original Silvan or Nandorin name was stated to be Lórinand; see p. 327, note 5].
With these remarks on Silvan names compare Appendix F (I) to The Lord of the Rings, section ‘Of the Elves’, footnote (appearing only in the revised edition).
Another general statement concerning Silvan Elvish is found in a linguistic-historical discussion dating from the same late period as that just cited:
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. 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.
APPENDIX B
THE SINDARIN PRINCES
OF THE SILVAN ELVES
In Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings, in the headnote to the Tale of Years of the Second Age, it is said that ‘before the building of the Barad-dûr many of the Sindar passed eastward, and some established realms in the forests far away, where their people were mostly Silvan Elves. Thranduil, king in the north of Greenwood the Great, was one of these.’
Something more of the history of these Sindarin princes of the Silvan Elves is found in my father’s late philological writings. Thus in one essay Thranduil’s realm is said to have
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 Elvish folk of this realm had migrated from the south, being the kin and neighbours of the Elves of Lórien; but they had dwelt in Gree
nwood the Great east of Anduin. In the Second Age their king, Oropher [the father of Thranduil, father of Legolas], had withdrawn northward beyond the Gladden Fields. This he did to be free from the power and encroachments of the Dwarves of Moria, which had grown to be the greatest of the mansions of the Dwarves recorded in history; and also he resented the intrusions of Celeborn and Galadriel into Lórien. But as yet there was little to fear between the Greenwood and the Mountains and there was constant intercourse between his people and their kin across the River, until the War of the Last Alliance.
Despite the desire of the Silvan Elves to meddle as little as might be in the affairs of the Noldor and Sindar, or of any other peoples, Dwarves, Men, or Orcs, Oropher had the wisdom to foresee that peace would not return unless Sauron was overcome. He therefore assembled a great army of his now numerous people, and joining with the lesser army of Malgalad of Lórien he led the host of the Silvan Elves to battle. The Silvan Elves were hardy and valiant, but ill-equipped with armour or weapons in comparison with the Eldar of the West; also they were independent, and not disposed to place themselves under the supreme command of Gil-galad. Their losses were thus more grievous than they need have been, even in that terrible war. Malgalad and more than half his following perished in the great battle of the Dagorlad, being cut off from the main host and driven into the Dead Marshes. Oropher was slain in the first assault upon Mordor, rushing forward at the head of his most doughty warriors before Gilgalad had given the signal for the advance. Thranduil his son survived, but when the war ended and Sauron was slain (as it seemed) he led back home barely a third of the army that had marched to war.
Malgalad of Lórien occurs nowhere else, and is not said here to be the father of Amroth. On the other hand, Amdír father of Amroth is twice (pp. 311 and 315 above) said to have been slain in the Battle of Dagorlad, and it seems therefore that Malgalad can be simply equated with Amdír. But which name replaced the other I cannot say. This essay continues:
A long peace followed in which the numbers of the Silvan Elves grew again; but they were unquiet and anxious, feeling the change of the world that the Third Age would bring. Men also were increasing in numbers and in power. The dominion of the Númenórean kings of Gondor was reaching out northwards towards the borders of Lórien and the Greenwood. The Free Men of the North (so called by the Elves because they were not under the rule of the Dúnedain, and had not for the most part been subjected by Sauron or his servants) were spreading southwards: mostly east of the Green-wood, though some were establishing themselves in the eaves of the forest and the grasslands of the Vales of Anduin. More ominous were rumours from the further East: the Wild Men were restless. Former servants and worshippers of Sauron, they were released now from his tyranny, but not from the evil and darkness that he had set in their hearts. Cruel wars raged among them, from which some were withdrawing westward, with minds filled with hatred, regarding all that dwelt in the West as enemies to be slain and plundered. But there was in Thranduil’s heart a still deeper shadow. He had seen the horror of Mordor and could not forget it. If ever he looked south its memory dimmed the light of the Sun, and though he knew that it was now broken and deserted and under the vigilance of the Kings of Men, fear spoke in his heart that it was not conquered for ever: it would arise again.
In another passage written at the same time as the foregoing it is said that when a thousand years of the Third Age had passed and the Shadow fell upon Greenwood the Great, the Silvan Elves ruled by Thranduil
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. Oropher was of Sindarin origin, and no doubt Thranduil his son was following the example of King Thingol long before, in Doriath; though his halls were not to be compared with Menegroth. He had not the arts nor the wealth nor the aid of the Dwarves; and compared with the Elves of Doriath his Silvan folk were rude and rustic. Oropher had come among them with only a handful of Sindar, and they were soon merged with the Silvan Elves, adopting their language and taking names of Silvan form and style. This they did deliberately; for they (and other similar adventurers forgotten in the legends or only briefly named) came from Doriath after its ruin, and had no desire to leave Middle-earth, nor to be merged with the other Sindar of Beleriand, dominated by the Noldorin Exiles for whom the folk of Doriath had no great love. They wished indeed to become Silvan folk and to return, as they said, to the simple life natural to the Elves before the invitation of the Valar had disturbed it.
Nowhere (I believe) is it made clear how the adoption of the Silvan speech by the Sindarin rulers of the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood, as described here, is to be related to the statement cited on p. 333 that by the end of the Third Age Silvan Elvish had ceased to be spoken in Thranduil’s realm.
See further note 14 to ‘The Disaster of the Gladden Fields’,p. 363.
APPENDIX C
THE BOUNDARIES OF LÓRIEN
In Appendix A (I, iv) to The Lord of the Rings the kingdom of Gondor at the summit of its power in the days of King Hyarmendacil I (Third Age 1015 – 1149) is said to have extended northwards ‘to Celebrant and the southern eaves of Mirkwood’. This my father stated several times to be in error: the correct reading should be ‘to the Field of Celebrant’. According to his late writing on the interrelations of the languages of Middle-earth,
The river Celebrant (Silverlode) was within the borders of the realm of Lórien, and the effective bounds of the kingdom of Gondor in the north (west of Anduin) was the river Limlight. The whole of the grasslands between Silverlode and Limlight, into which the woods of Lórien formerly extended further south, were known in Lórien as Parth Celebrant (i.e. the field, or enclosed grassland, of Silverlode) and regarded as part of its realm, though not inhabited by its Elvish folk beyond the eaves of the woods. In later days Gondor built a bridge over the upper Limlight, and often occupied the narrow land between the lower Limlight and Anduin as part of its eastern defences, since the great loops of the Anduin (where it came down swiftly past Lórien and entered low flat lands before its descent again into the chasm of the Emyn Muil) had many shallows and wide shoals over which a determined and well-equipped enemy could force a crossing by rafts or pontoons, especially in the two westward bends, known as the North and South Undeeps. It was to this land that the name Parth Celebrant was applied in Gondor; hence its use in defining the ancient northern boundary. In the time of the War of the Ring, when all the land north of the White Mountains (save Anórien) as far as the Limlight had become part of the Kingdom of Rohan, the name Parth (Field of ) Celebrant was only used of the great battle in which Eorl the Young destroyed the invaders of Gondor [see pp. 387– 8].
In another essay my father noted that whereas east and west the land of Lórien was bounded by Anduin and by the mountains (and he says nothing about any extension of the realm of Lórien across the Anduin, see p. 326), it had no clearly defined borders northward and southward.
Of old the Galadhrim had claimed to govern the woods as far as the falls in the Silverlode where Frodo was bathed; southward it had extended far beyond the Silverlode into more open woodland of smaller trees that merged into Fangorn Forest, though the heart of the realm had always been in the angle between Silverlode and Anduin where Caras Galadhon stood. There were no visible borders between Lórien and Fangorn, but neither the Ents nor the Galadhrim ever passed them. For legend reported that Fangorn himself had met the King of the Galadhrim in ancient days, and Fangorn had said: ‘I know mine, and you know yours; let neither side molest what is the other’s. But if an Elf should wish to walk in my land for his pleasure he will be welcome; and if an Ent should be seen in your land fear no evil.’ Long years had passed, however, since Ent or Elf had set foot in the other land.
APPENDIX D
THE PORT OF LOND DAER
It was told in ‘Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn’ that in the war against Sauron in Eriador at the end of the seventeen
th century of the Second Age the Númenórean admiral Ciryatur put a strong force ashore at the mouth of the Gwathló (Greyflood), where there was ‘a small Númenórean harbour’ (p. 309). This seems to be the first reference to that port, of which a good deal is told in later writings.
The fullest account is in the philological essay concerning the names of rivers which has already been cited in connection with the legend of Amroth and Nimrodel (pp. 313 ff.). In this essay the name Gwathló is discussed as follows:
The river Gwathló is translated ‘Greyflood’. But gwath is a Sindarin word for ‘shadow’, in the sense of dim light, owing to cloud or mist, or in deep valleys. This does not seem to fit the geography. The wide lands divided by the Gwathló into the regions called by the Númenóreans Minhiriath (‘Between the Rivers’, Baranduin and Gwathló) and Enedwaith (‘Middle-folk’) were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mitheithel [Hoarwell] the land was almost flat, and the waters became sluggish and tended to spread into fenland. * But some hundred miles below Tharbad the slope increased. The Gwathló, however, never became swift, and ships of smaller draught could without difӿculty sail or be rowed as far as Tharbad.
The origin of the name Gwathló must be sought in history. In the time of the War of the Ring the lands were still in places well-wooded, especially in Minhiriath and in the south-east of Enedwaith; but most of the plains were grasslands. Since the Great Plague of the year 1636 of the Third Age Minhiriath had been almost entirely deserted, though a few secretive hunter-folk lived in the woods. In Enedwaith the remnants of the Dunlendings lived in the east, in the foothills of the Misty Mountains; and a fairly numerous but barbarous fisher-folk dwelt between the mouths of the Gwathló and the Angren (Isen).