The Complete Tolkien Companion (56 page)

Strategically this was a sound move. The Gap between the Misty Mountains and the White could have long been held against them – whereas by taking the eastern route, only the Morannon, the ‘Black Gate' itself, stood between the Hosts and Sauron's own land of Mordor. That same year the armies met in a gigantic conflict upon Dagorlad, and Sauron was swept away, and the Last Alliance ‘had the mastery: for the Spear of Gil-galad and the Sword of Elendil, Aiglos and Narsil, none could withstand.'

Yet the victory was not complete, though many Elves and Men perished in the Battle of Dagorlad. Sauron retreated to his Dark Tower and there withstood a siege of seven years; for the Barad-dûr was too strong to be cast down from without, and Sauron could wait. But in the end (3441) he emerged, and the final combat of the Last Alliance was fought upon the slopes of Orodruin between the Dark Lord and his chief foes: Elendil and Gil-galad. The Elven-king was destroyed, but by his death enabled Elendil to strike down Sauron before he, too, was slain.

With the overthrow of the Dark Lord, the Last Alliance should have achieved its purpose of freeing the inhabitants of Middle-earth from his domination. Yet in the very hour of triumph this was cast away by a single (if excusable) act of wilfulness. Isildur, Elendil's son (whose brother Anárion had been slain the previous year at the siege of Barad-dûr) stood beside his father during those last moments, and his grief overbore him. He cut the Ruling Ring from Sauron's hand with his father's sword Narsil, but although urged to destroy it (in the Cracks of Doom which were nigh at hand), he kept it as a weregild for his father and brother. In this way the ancient essence of Sauron's power survived his defeat, and the sacrifices of the Last Alliance were rendered in vain; though few saw Isildur's action or believed the victory anything but complete. Yet within two years the Ring's evil power had already claimed Isildur's own life: neither the first nor the last to be lost before the final destruction of the Ring, an Age later, completed the overthrow of its Master.

Last Battle
– The Battle which many ancient legends prophesy will be fought at the Ending of the World.
See
DAGOR DAGORATH
.

Last Bridge
– The Bridge across the river Mitheithel in Eriador, so-called because it was both the southernmost bridge across the river and the easternmost on the Great East Road.

Last Homely House
– The House of Elrond in Rivendell. It was known to Elves as ‘The Last Homely House East of the Sea'.

Last Mountain
– A translation of
Methedras,
‘Last-peak' (Sind.); southernmost of the Misty Mountains.

‘The Last Ship'
– The title of a Fourth Age Hobbit-poem found in the Red Book of Westmarch and published as No. 16 in
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
The significance of this verse is discussed elsewhere (
see
FÍRIEL
).

Last Shore
– An Elvish symbolic or poetic reference to the shores of Eldamar in the Uttermost West, beyond the furthest Seas.

Laura Baggins
– Bilbo's grandmother (born Laura Chubb). Her husband was Mungo Baggins of Hobbiton; their son was Bungo who married the famous Belladonna Took.

Laurelin the Golden
– The name given by the Eldar of the Undying Lands to the Younger of the
TWO TREES
of Valinor; its other names were
Malinalda
and
Culúrien.
The Elder Tree was named
Telperion.

Laurelin,
which means ‘Golden-song' in the Quenya tongue, bore shining golden leaves, the Light from which mingled with the Silver Flowers of the Elder Tree to illuminate the land of the Valar and those parts of Eldamar nearest the Calacirya. The Two Trees were beloved above all else by the dwellers in Valimar and Eldamar. But both were poisoned by Melkor (Morgoth) during the First Age. And although a seedling of Telperion survived (
see
GALATHILION
) there were no known descendants of Laurelin – except the Sun (Anar), which was made, so the Elves say, from the last Leaf of Gold, coaxed from the dying Laurelin by Yavanna Kementári, Maker of the Two Trees.

Laurelindórenan
‘Land-of-the-Valley-of-Singing-Gold' (Q.) – The full High-elven name for the Golden Wood of Wilderland; in the Third Age this forest was called
LOTHLÓRIEN
. The origin of this exceedingly ancient name is not altogether clear. One might have had no hesitation in assuming that it was given to the Golden Wood by the Eldar, as they passed westwards during the Great Journey – except that it contains the element
Laurelin,
which was of course also (and originally) the name of the Golden Tree of Valinor: a word the migrating Eldar would not then have known. The only other possibility is that the name was given to the Golden Wood by Galadriel, when she came there with Celeborn in the early part of the Second Age. Likewise
Lothlórien,
which contains the name of the Vala Irmo (
Lórien
), argues a knowledge of Valinorean affairs, and therefore a High-elven origin (although the
loth
element, meaning ‘blossom' or ‘flower', is inconveniently Sindarin in form).

Laurinquë
– A golden-flowered tree of southern Númenor, believed (erroneously) to be descended from Laurelin, the Golden Tree of Valinor.

Lay of Eärendil
– A poem made in the early Second Age (probably in Lindon) by an unknown minstrel, concerning the Voyage of Eärendil the Mariner, and what came of it. (It is quite unconnected, so far as is known, with ‘Eärendil Was A Mariner', a poem composed by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the late Third Age.)

Lay of Leithian
– The story of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren of the Edain, the original poetic account from which all subsequent extracts or translations have been drawn. It is the second longest poem surviving from the Elder Days, and was originally composed in the Grey-elven or Sindarin language. For long it was preserved only in the memories of living Elves, but thanks largely to the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, it was eventually copied down in written form, and so has come to survive into our own day, as part of the collection of legends, poems and traditions assembled by Bilbo in Rivendell (under the ‘working' title
Translations from the Elvish
).
1

Leithian
is a composite word which translates as ‘Release-from-Bondage'. This is indeed the recurrent theme of the Tale of Beren and Lúthien: release from the bondage of the Quest, and of Beren's vow; release from the bondage of life in a darkened Middle-earth; release from the constraints of a Death that would have separated them for ever; and finally, release from the Circles of the World.

Lay of Lúthien
–
See
preceding entry.

Lay of Nimrodel
– An Elven-chant telling the story of the maiden
NIMRODEL
, who dwelt during the Third Age on the borders of Lothlórien, near the fair stream which later bore her name. The verse was said to be of Silvan (Wood-elven) origin.
See also
AMROTH
.

Leaflock
– A translation of the name
FINGLAS
(Sind.).

Lebennin
– A province of Gondor; a wide green land which lay between the rivers Gilrain and Anduin and the lower reaches of the Erui. In the far south it was bounded by the Anduin delta and in the north by the eastern range of the
Ered Nimrais,
the White Mountains. Its chief city was the ancient port of Pelargir, on the Anduin.

Lebethron
– A variety of tree found in Gondor, much prized by the woodwrights and carpenters of that land for the beauty and durability of its black wood.

Lefnui
– The chief river of the province of Anfalas in Gondor. It rose in a great western coomb of the White Mountains and wandered gently to the Sea, its mouth forming the ‘heel' of Cape Andrast.

Legolas
‘Green-leaf' (Sind.) – It may seem curious that with all the mighty Elven-lords who dwelled in Rivendell at the time of the Council of Elrond, it should have been an Elf of Mirkwood who was actually chosen to represent the Elf-kindreds in the Fellowship of the Ring. Legolas was the son of King Thranduil of Mirkwood, and thus an Elven-prince of Sindarin blood; but Elves far older and mightier than he could have been chosen for the Quest and would not have refused. Yet all Elrond's choices were apt. He selected the Company of the Ring for reasons of fellowship rather than for strength or latent power. This Fellowship was to represent each of the Free Peoples – Hobbits, Men, Dwarves and Elves – and Legolas the Elf and Gimli the Dwarf, whose road home lay in the same direction, were both chosen to journey ‘at least to the passes of the Mountains, and maybe beyond'.
2
In the event both remained with the leader of the Fellowship throughout the War of the Ring.

During these travels far from his home three profound experiences deeply affected the Elf. Like all his race, Legolas was a lover of trees, and the venerable growths of Fangorn – most ancient of all forests still surviving in Middle-earth in those days – filled him with great wonder. More unusually still, his travels in the company of a Dwarf did not lead to mistrust and contention – as unhappily was all too often the case – but to its opposites: comradeship, respect and love. Finally, his journeys with Aragorn and the Grey Company brought Legolas to the seaward lands of Lebennin, where he heard for the first time the crying of gulls, stirring within his breast the ancient and mystic ‘sea-longing' of his people.

After the conclusion of the War of the Ring and the dawning of the Fourth Age, Legolas brought Elves of the Silvan race south from Mirkwood to the uplands of Ithilien, where they dwelled for a while in the fairest province of Gondor, with the permission and blessing of the King. After the Passing of King Elessar (Year 120 Fourth Age), Legolas at last followed the desire in his heart and sailed over Sea, taking with him his great comrade, Gimli Elf-friend, Dwarf of Durin's Line. ‘And when that ship passed an end was come in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring'.
3

Legolin
– A river of Ossiriand, a tributary of Gelion. Its source lay in the Blue Mountains.

Lembas
(from Q.
lenn-mbass
‘Journey-bread') – The Sindarin name for a kind of travellers' food or ‘way-bread', baked by the Elves of Lothlórien. It resembled
cram
(the biscuit of the Men of Dale) in purpose but not in effect, being quite delicious and greatly sustaining, the more so if it was not mingled with other foods. It consisted of light-golden meal-cakes which kept fresh for many days if left in their mallorn-leaf wrappings. Another Quenya name was
coimas,
‘bread of life'.

Note:
a recently available source gives a Valinorean provenance for this waybread.
4
Grown from a seed made by the Vala Yavanna, each ear was picked by hand and stored in baskets made of the dried haulms. When ready it was baked according to a secret recipe. The Eldar were discouraged from making it too freely available to other ‘speaking-peoples', since its use stimulated a longing for Valinor which could never be requited.

Lenwë
– One of the Eldar of the Great Journey, the leader of those of the Teleri – the last-comers, afterwards called
Nandor
– who baulked at the crossing of the Misty Mountains and thus became separated from all the other Eldar. This was the second sundering of the Elves (the first had been the division between Eldar and Avari). Lenwë remained in Wilderland, but his son Denethor, together with a more adventurous remnant of the Nandor, wandered eventually into Eriador, and later still into Beleriand, where they became known as ‘Green-elves'. Lenwë's fate is not known.

Léod
– A Lord of the Men of Éothéod and the father of Eorl the Young, first King of Rohan. Like many Men of his northern land, Léod was a great horse-tamer, but one day he chanced to capture an animal which could not be tamed and eventually threw him, thus causing his death.

Léod's son Eorl hunted the stallion and caught him, claiming the animal's freedom as weregild for his father's death; this horse, Felaróf, was the first of the fabled
Mearas.

Léofa
‘Beloved' – The vernacular name given in Rohan to King
BRYTTA
.

Lhûn
(pl.
Luin
) ‘Blue' (Sind.) –
See
LUNE
.

Light-elves
– The
CALAQUENDI
.

Lightfoot –
A horse of Rohan, the dam of Snowmane, steed of King Théoden.

Lilly Cotton
– The wife of Farmer Tolman (‘Tom') Cotton and mother of Rose Cotton, who wedded the illustrious Sam Gamgee.

Limlight
– A river flowing eastwards from the northern marches of Fangorn Forest into the Anduin. It was accounted the northern border of Rohan.

Linaewen
‘Lake-of-[small]-birds' (Sind.) – The marsh-encircled lake in the middle of Nevrast.

Lindar
‘The Singers' (Q.) – The oldest name of the Third Kindred of the Eldar, the
TELERI
.

Lindir
‘One-who-sings' (Sind.) – An Elf of Rivendell, possibly a minstrel.

Lindon
‘Land-of-Song' (Sind.) – In origin, a name given by the exiled Noldor of Beleriand to the green, unknown (to them) country between the river Gelion and the Blue Mountains. This region was known to its inhabitants, the Green-elves, and to the Sindar, as
OSSIRIAND
. But the High-elves seldom crossed the lower Gelion, and the name Lindon reflects their (entirely occidental) impressions of this green, secret land, the sweet singing of whose inhabitants could be heard far across the river. (The Green-elves were a subdivision of the Nandor, a division of the Teleri, most musical of all Elves;
see
also
FALMARI
.) Consequently the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin), which the Noldor never crossed during their exile, became known to them as the
Ered Lindon.