The Peoples of Middle-earth (54 page)

The Elvish loremasters held that in the matter of language the changes in speech (as in all the ways of their lives) of the Speaking Peoples were far slower in the Elder Days than they later became. The tongue of the Eldar changed mainly by design; that of the Dwarves resisted change by their own will; the many languages of Men changed heedlessly in the swift passing of their generations. All things changed in Arda, even in the Blessed Realm of the Valar; but there the change was so slow that it could not be observed (save maybe by the Valar) in great ages of time. The change in the language of the Eldar would thus have been halted in Valinor;(36) but in their early days the Eldar continued to enlarge and refine their language, and to change it, even in structure and sounds. Such change, however, to remain uniform required that the speakers should remain in communication. Thus it came about that the languages of the Eldar that remained in Middle-earth diverged from the language of the High Eldar of Valinor so greatly that neither could be understood by speakers of the other; for they had been separated for a great age of time, during which even the Sindarin, the best preserved of those in Middle-earth, had been subject to the heedless changes of passing years, changes which the Teleri were far less concerned to restrain or to direct by design than the Noldor.

II.

The Atani and their Languages.(37)

Men entered Beleriand late in the First Age. Those with whom we are here concerned and of whose languages some records later were preserved belonged mostly to three peoples, differing in speech and in race, but known in common to the Eldar as the Atani (Sindarin Edain).(38) These Atani were the vanguard of far larger hosts of the same kinds moving westwards. When the First Age ended and Beleriand was destroyed, and most of the Atani who survived had passed over sea to Numenor, their laggard kindred were either in Eriador, some settled, some still wandering, or else had never passed the Misty Mountains and were scattered in the lands between the Iron Hills and the Sea of Rhun eastward and the Great Forest, in the borders of which, northward and eastward, many were already settled.

The Atani and their kin were the descendants of peoples who in the Dark Ages had resisted Morgoth or had renounced him, and had wandered ever westward from their homes far away in the East seeking the Great Sea, of which distant rumour had reached them. They did not know that Morgoth himself had left Middle-earth;(39) for they were ever at war with the vile things that he had bred, and especially with Men who had made him their God and believed that they could render him no more pleasing service than to destroy the 'renegades' with every kind of cruelty. It was in the North of Middle-earth, it would seem, that the 'renegades' survived in sufficient numbers to maintain their independence as brave and hardy peoples; but of their past they preserved only legends, and their oral histories reached no further back than a few generations of Men.

When their vanguards at last reached Beleriand and the Western Shores they were dismayed. For they could go no further, but they had not found peace, only lands engaged in war with Morgoth himself, who had fled back to Middle-earth. 'Through ages forgotten,' they said, 'we have wandered, seeking to escape from the Dominions of the Dark Lord and his Shadow, only to find him here before us.(40) But being people both brave and desperate they at once became allies of the Eldar, and they were instructed by them and became ennobled and advanced in knowledge and in arts. In the final years of the War of the Jewels they provided many of the most valiant warriors and captains in the armies of the Elvish kings.

The Atani were three peoples, independent in organisation and leadership, each of which differed in speech and also in form and bodily features from the others - though all of them showed traces of mingling in the past with Men of other kinds.

These peoples the Eldar named the Folk of Beor, the Folk of Hador, and the Folk of Haleth, after the names of the chieftains who commanded them when they first came to Beleriand.(41) The Folk of Beor were the first Men to enter Beleriand - they were met in the dales of East Beleriand by King Finrod the Friend of Men, for they had found a way over the Mountains. They were a small people, having no more, it is said, than two thousand full-grown men; and they were poor and ill-equipped, but they were inured to hardship and toilsome journeys carrying great loads, for they had no beasts of burden. Not long after the first of the three hosts of the Folk of Hador came up from southward, and two others of much the same strength followed before the fall of the year. They were a more numerous people; each host was as great as all the Folk of Beor, and they were better armed and equipped; also they possessed many horses, and some asses and small flocks of sheep and goats. They had crossed Eriador and reached the eastern feet of the Mountains (Ered Lindon) a year or more ahead of all others, but had not attempted to find any passes, and had turned away seeking a road round the Mountains, which, as their horsed scouts reported, grew ever lower as they went southwards. Some years later, when the other folk were settled, the third folk of the Atani entered Beleriand.(42) They were probably more numerous than the Folk of Beor, but no certain count of them was ever made; for they came secretly in small parties and hid in the woods of Ossiriand where the Elves showed them no friendship.

Moreover they had strife among themselves, and Morgoth, now aware of the coming of hostile Men into Beleriand, sent his servants to afflict them. Those who eventually moved westward and entered into friendship and alliance with the Eldar were called the Folk of Haleth, for Haleth was the name of their chieftainess who led them to the woods north of Doriath where they were permitted to dwell.

The Folk of Hador were ever the greatest in numbers of the Atani, and in renown (save only Beren son of Barahir descendant of Beor). For the most part they were tall people, with flaxen or golden hair and blue-grey eyes, but there were not a few among them that had dark hair, though all were fair-skinned.(43) Nonetheless they were akin to the Folk of Beor, as was shown by their speech. It needed no lore of tongues to perceive that their languages were closely related, for although they could understand one another only with difficulty they had very many words in common. The Elvish loremasters (44) were of opinion that both languages were descended from one that had diverged (owing to some division of the people who had spoken it) in the course of, maybe, a thousand years of the slower change in the First Age.(45) Though the time might well have been less, and change quickened by a mingling of peoples; for the language of Hador was apparently less changed and more uniform in style, whereas the language of Beor contained many elements that were alien in character. This contrast in speech was probably connected with the observable physical differences between the two peoples. There were fair-haired men and women among the Folk of Beor, but most of them had brown hair (going usually with brown eyes), and many were less fair in skin, some indeed being swarthy. Men as tall as the Folk of Hador were rare among them, and most were broader and more heavy in build.(46) In association with the Eldar, especially with the followers of King Finrod, they became as enhanced in arts and manners as the Folk of Hador, but if these surpassed them in swiftness of mind and body, in daring and noble generosity,(47) the Folk of Beor were more steadfast in endurance of hardship and sorrow, slow to tears or to laughter; their fortitude needed no hope to sustain it. But these differences of body and mind became less marked as their short generations passed, for the two peoples became much mingled by intermarriage and by the disasters of the War.(48)

The Folk of Haleth were strangers to the other Atani, speaking an alien language; and though later united with them in alliance with the Eldar, they remained a people apart. Among themselves they adhered to their own language, and though of necessity they learned Sindarin for communication with the Eldar and the other Atani, many spoke it haltingly, and some of those who seldom went beyond the borders of their own woods did not use it at all.(49) They did not willingly adopt new things or customs, and retained many practices that seemed strange to the Eldar and the other Atani, with whom they had few dealings except in war. Nonetheless they were esteemed as loyal allies and redoubtable warriors, though the companies that they sent to battle beyond their borders were small. For they were and remained to their end a small people, chiefly concerned to protect their own woodlands, and they excelled in forest warfare.

Indeed for long even those Orks specially trained for this dared not set foot near their borders. One of the strange practices spoken of was that many of their warriors were women, though few of these went abroad to fight in the great battles. This custom was evidently ancient;(50) for their chieftainess Haleth had been a renowned amazon with a picked bodyguard of women.

At this point a heading is pencilled on the typescript: m The Druedain (Pukel-men); after this there are no further divisions with sub-titles inserted. Together with the concluding paragraph of section II printed above, the account of the Druedain that now follows is given in Unfinished Tales, pp. 377-82, concluding with the story called The Faithful Stone; and there is no need to repeat this here.(51) At the end of the story is a passage contrasting Drugs and Hobbits, which since it was given in curtailed form in Unfinished Tales (p. 382) is printed here in full; the present text then continues to the end, or rather abandonment, of the essay.

This long account of the Druedain has been given, because it throws some light on the Wild Men still surviving at the time of the War of the Ring in the eastern end of the White Mountains, and on Merry's recognition of them as living forms of the carved Pukel-men of Dun Harrow. The presence of members of the same race among the Edain in Beleriand thus makes another backward link between The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, and allows the introduction of characters somewhat similar to the Hobbits of The Lord of the Rings into some of the legends of the First Age (e.g. the old retainer (Sadog) of Hurin in the legend of Turin).(52)

The Drugs or Pukel-men are not however to be confused with or thought of as a mere variant on the hobbit theme. They were quite different in physical shape and appearance. Their average height (four feet) was only reached by exceptional hobbits; they were of heavier and stronger build; and their facial features were unlovely (judged by general human standards). Physically they shared the hairlessness of the lower face; but while the head-hair of the hobbits was abundant (but close and curly), the Drugs had only sparse and lank hair on their heads and none at all on their legs and feet. In character and temperament they were at times merry and gay, like hobbits, but they had a grimmer side to their nature and could be sardonic and ruthless; and they had or were credited with strange or magical powers.

(The tales, such as 'The Faithful Stone', that speak of their transferring part of their 'powers' to their artefacts, remind one in miniature of Sauron's transference of power to the foundation of the Barad-dur and to the Ruling Ring.)(53) Also the Drugs were a frugal folk, and ate sparingly even in times of peace and plenty, and drank nothing but water. In some ways they resembled rather the Dwarves: in build and stature and endurance (though not in hair); in their skill in carving stone; in the grim side of their character; and in ',strange powers'. Though the

'magic' skills with which the Dwarves were credited were quite different; also the Dwarves were much grimmer; and they were long-lived, whereas the Drugs were short-lived compared with other kinds of Men.

The Drugs that are met in the tales of the First Age - cohabiting with the Folk of Haleth, who were a woodland people

- were content to live in tents or shelters lightly built round the trunks of large trees, for they were a hardy race. In their former homes, according to their own tales, they had used caves in the mountains, but mainly as store-houses only occupied as dwellings and sleeping-places in severe weather. They had similar refuges in Beleriand to which all but the most hardy retreated in times of storm and bitter weather; but these places were guarded and not even their closest friends among the Folk of Haleth were welcomed there.

Hobbits on the other hand were in nearly all respects normal Men, but of very short stature. They were called 'halflings'; but this refers to the normal height of men of Numenorean descent and of the Eldar (especially those of Noldorin descent), which appears to have been about seven of our feet.(54) Their height at the periods concerned was usually more than three feet for men, though very few ever exceeded three foot six; women seldom exceeded three feet. They were not as numerous or variable as ordinary Men, but evidently more numerous and adaptable to different modes of life and habitat than the Drugs, and when they are first encountered in the histories already showed divergences in colouring, stature, and build, and in their ways of life and preferences for different types of country to dwell in (see the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, p. 12). In their unrecorded past they must have been a primitive, indeed 'savage' people,(55) but when we meet them they had (in varying degrees) acquired many arts and customs by contact with Men, and to a less extent with Dwarves and Elves. With Men of normal stature they recognized their close kinship, whereas Dwarves or Elves, whether friendly or hostile, were aliens, with whom their relations were uneasy and clouded by fear.(56) Bilbo's statement (The Lord of the Rings 1.162)(57) that the cohabitation of Big Folk and Little Folk in one settlement at Bree was peculiar and nowhere else to be found was probably true in his time (the end of the Third Age);(58) but it would seem that actually Hobbits had liked to live with or near to Big Folk of friendly kind, who with their greater strength protected them from many dangers and enemies and other hostile Men, and received in exchange many services. For it is remarkable that the western Hobbits preserved no trace or memory of any language of their own. The language they spoke when they entered Eriador was evidently adopted from the Men of the Vales of Anduin (related to the Atani, / in particular to those of the House of Beor [> of the Houses of Hador and of Beor]); and after their adoption of the Common Speech they retained many words of that origin. This indicates a close association with Big Folk; though the rapid adoption of the Common Speech in Eriador (59) shows Hobbits to have been specially adaptable in this respect. As does also the divergence of the Stoors, who had associated with Men of different sort before they came to the Shire.