The Peoples of Middle-earth (58 page)

Too like Hobbits' (a reference of course to Frodo and Farmer Maggot's mushrooms). This followed the account of the knowledge of the Drugs concerning plants, and reads:

To the astonishment of Elves and other Men they ate funguses with pleasure, many of which looked to others ugly and dangerous; some kinds which they specially liked they caused to grow near their dwellings. The Eldar did not eat these things. The Folk of Haleth, taught by the Druedain, made some use of them at need; and if they were guests they ate what was provided in courtesy, and without fear. The other Atani eschewed them, save in great hunger when astray in the wild, for few among them had the knowledge to distinguish the wholesome from the bad, and the less wise called them ork-plants and supposed them to have been cursed and blighted by Morgoth.]

52. [See Unfinished Tales, p. 386, note 8. Elsewhere Hurin's serving-man is named Sador, not Sadog.]

53. [This sentence is cited in Unfinished Tales, p. 387, note 11.]

54. See the discussion of lineal measurements and their equation with our measures in the legend of The Disaster of the Gladden Fields.

[This discussion (which, with the work itself, belongs to the very late period - 1968 or later) is found in Unfinished Tales, pp. 285

ff., where a note on the stature of Hobbits is also given.]

55. In the original sense of 'savage'; they were by nature of gentle disposition, neither cruel nor vindictive.

56. Of different kinds: Dwarves they found of uncertain temper and dangerous if displeased; Elves they viewed with awe, and avoided. Even in the Shire in the Third Age, where Elves were more often to be met than in other regions where Hobbits dwelt or had dwelt, most of the Shire-folk would have no dealings with them. 'They wander in Middle-earth,' they said, 'but their minds and hearts are not there.'

57. ['Nowhere else in the world was this peculiar (but excellent) arrangement to be found': opening of the chapter At the Sign of the Prancing Pony. This observation is here attributed to Bilbo as the ultimate author of the Red Book of Westmarch.]

58. Indeed it is probable that only at Bree and in the Shire did any communities of Hobbits survive at that time west of the Misty Mountains. Nothing is known of the situation in lands further east, from which the Hobbits must have migrated in unrecorded ages.

59. When they entered Eriador (early in the second century of the Third Age) Men were still numerous there, both Numenoreans and other Men related to the Atani, beside remnants of Men of evil kinds, hostile to the Kings. But the Common Speech (of Numenorean origin) was in general use there, even after the decay of the North Kingdom. In Bilbo's time great areas of Eriador were empty of Men. The desolation had begun in the Great Plague (soon after the Hobbits' occupation of the Shire), and was hastened by the final fall and disappearance of the North Kingdom. In the Plague it would seem that the only Hobbit communities to survive were those in the far North-west at Bree and in the Shire. [The opening sentence of this note, placing the entry of the Hobbits into Eriador 'early in the second century of the Third Age', is plainly a casual error: presumably my father intended 'millennium' for 'century' (in Appendix B the date of the coming of the Harfoots is given under Third Age 1050, and that of the Fallohides and the Stoors under 1150).]

60. The invasions were no doubt also in great part due to Sauron; for the 'Easterlings' were mostly Men of cruel and evil kind, descendants of those who had served and worshipped Sauron before his overthrow at the end of the Second Age.

61. Though the native traditions of the Rohirrim preserved no memories of the ancient war in Beleriand, they accepted the belief, which did much to strengthen their friendship with Gondor and their unbroken loyalty to the Oath of Eorl and Cirion. [In relation to this note and to the passage in the text to which it refers my father wrote in the margin of the typescript: It may have been actually true of those Men in Middle-earth whom the returning Numenoreans first met (see below); but other Men of the North resembling them in features and temper can only have been akin as descending from peoples of which the Atani had been the vanguard.]

62. [In Quendi and Eldar (XI.377) there is a reference to Avari 'who had crept in small and secret groups into Beleriand from the South', and to rare cases of an Avar 'who joined with or was admitted among the Sindar'; while in that essay Eol of Nan Elmoth was an Avar (XI.409 and note 33).]

63. [The Little Lune was first marked on the third and last of my father's general maps of the West of Middle-earth (that on which my original map published with The Lord of the Rings was closely based), but this appears to be the first time that it has been named.]

64. [With this statement that the region beyond the inflow of the Little Lune was 'Dwarf territory' cf. Appendix A (I, iii), where it is told that Arvedui, the last king of Arthedain, 'hid in the tunnels of the old dwarf-mines near the far end of the Mountains'.]

65. Gil-galad's people were mainly Noldorin; though in the Second Age the Elves of Harlindon were mainly Sindarin, and the region was a fief under the rule of Celeborn. [In the prefatory note to the annals of the Second Age in Appendix B it is said: 'In Lindon south of the Lune dwelt for a time Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol'; see Unfinished Tales p. 233 and note 2, where the present note is referred to.]

66. [See Unfinished Tales, pp. 262-3 (extract from a late essay on the names of the rivers and beacon-hills of Gondor). - The name was typed Enedwaith with the h added subsequently, but later in this essay (note 76) the form typed is Enedhwaith; so also in that on river-names just mentioned, although in the extracts given in Unfinished Tales I printed Enedwaith for agreement with published texts.]

67. This according to the traditions of Dol Amroth had been established by seafaring Sindar from the west havens of Beleriand who fled in three small ships when the power of Morgoth overwhelmed the Eldar and the Atani; but it was later increased by adventurers of the Silvan Elves seeking for the Sea who came down the Anduin. The Silvan Elves were Middle Elves according to the Numenorean classification, though unknown to the Atani until later days: for they were like the Sindar Teleri, but were laggards in the hindmost companies who had never crossed the Misty Mountains and established small realms on either side of the Vales of Anduin. (Of these Lorien and the realm of Thranduil in Mirkwood were survivors in the Third Age.) But they were never wholly free of an unquiet and a yearning for the Sea which at times drove some of them to wander from their homes. [On this haven (Edhellond) see Unfinished Tales, pp. 246 - 7 and note 18 on p. 255.]

68. The first sailings of the Numenoreans to Middle-earth were to the lands of Gil-galad, with whom their great mariner Aldarion made an alliance.

69. As the power of Numenor became more and more occupied with great navies, for which their own land could not supply sufficient timber without ruin, their felling of trees and transportation of wood to their shipyards in Numenor or on the coast of Middle-earth (especially at Lond Daer, the Great Harbour at the mouth of the Greyflood) became reckless. [See Unfinished Tales, p. 262, on the tree-felling of the Numenoreans in Minhiriath and Enedhwaith. Of the kinship of the forest-dwellers of those regions with the People of Haleth there is no suggestion elsewhere (see also note 72 below). With the following sentence in the text,

'In the Third Age their survivors were the people known in Rohan as the Dunlendings' cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 263: 'From Enedwaith they [the native people fleeing from the Numenoreans] took refuge in the eastern mountains where afterwards was Dunland'.]

70. [This was the voyage of Veantur the Numenorean, grandfather of Aldarion the Mariner: see Unfinished Tales, pp. 171, 174-5.]

71. [At the words in the text printed in Unfinished Tales 'as if addressing friends and kinsmen after a long parting' there is a note in the essay which I did not include:

The Atani had learned the Sindarin tongue in Beleriand and most of them, especially the high men and the learned, had spoken it familiarly, even among themselves: but always as a learned language, taught in early childhood; their native language remained the Adunaic, the Mannish tongue of the Folk of Hador (except in some districts of the west of the Isle where the rustic folk used a Beorian dialect). Thus the Sindarin they used had remained unchanged through many lives of Men.

With this cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 215 note 19. I do not know how the mention here of 'a Beorian dialect' surviving in the west of Numenor is to be related to the total loss of the language of the Folk of Beor referred to in note 44; see also p. 368 and note 5.]

72. This may have been one of the reasons why the Numenoreans failed to recognize the Forest-folk of Minhiriath as 'kinsmen', and confused them with Men of the Shadow; for as has been noted the native language of the Folk of Haleth was not related to the language of the Folks of Hador and Beor.

73. And those that they adopted from older inhabitants they usually altered to fit the Sindarin style. Their names of persons also were nearly all of Sindarin form, save a few which had descended from the legends of the Atani in the First Age.

74. It thus became naturally somewhat corrupted from the true Sindarin of the Elves, but this was hindered by the fact that Sindarin was held in high esteem and was taught in the schools, according to forms and grammatical structure of ancient days.

75. The Elf-realm became diminished in the wars against Sauron, and by the establishment of Imladris, and it no longer extended east of the Ered Luin.

76. The Enedhwaith (or Central Wilderness) was shared by the North and South Kingdoms, but was never settled by Numenoreans owing to the hostility of the Gwathuirim (Dunlendings), except in the fortified town and haven about the great bridge over the Greyflood at Tharbad. [The name Gwathuirim of the Dunlendings has not occurred before.]

77. [It was said in Appendix A (I, iv) that at the height of its power the realm of Gondor 'extended north to Celebrant', and a long note in the essay at this point, beginning 'But for "Celebrant"

read "Field of Celebrant"', is an exposition of the significance of the latter name (Parth Celebrant). This note is given in Unfinished Tales, p. 260.]

78. [The River Running is named Celduin in Appendix A, III (RK

p. 353). Celon was the river that in the First Age rose in the Hill of Himring and flowed past Nan Elmoth to join the Aros; and since Celduin as the name of the River Running appears in the very late text Cirion and Eorl (Unfinished Tales p. 289) Celon here is presumably no more than a casual confusion of the names.]

XI.

THE SHIBBOLETH OF FEANOR.

With an excursus on the name of

the descendants of Finwe.

In all my father's last writings linguistic history was closely inter-twined with the history of persons and of peoples, and much that he recounted can be seen to have arisen in the search for explanations of linguistic facts or anomalies. The most remarkable example of this is the following essay, arising from his consideration of a problem of historical phonology, which records how the difference in pronunciation of a single consonantal element in Quenya played a significant part in the strife of the Noldorin princes in Valinor. It has no title, but I have called it The Shibboleth of Feanor, since my father himself used that word in the course of the essay (p. 336).

Like Of Dwarves and Men, it was written (composed in typescript throughout) on paper supplied by Allen and Unwin, in this case mostly copies of a publication note of February 1968; and as in that essay there are very many notes interpolated into the body of the text in the process of composition. Appended to it is a lengthy excursus

{half as long again as the essay from which it arose) on the names of Finwe's descendants, and this I give also; but from both The Shibboleth of Feanor proper and from this excursus I have excluded a number of notes, some of them lengthy, of a technical phonological nature.

The work was not finished, for my father did not reach, as was his intention, discussion of the names of the Sons of Feanor; but such draft material as there is for this part is given at the end of the text.

All numbered notes, both my father's and mine, are collected on pp.

356 ff.

This work was scarcely used in Unfinished Tales except for a passage concerning Galadriel, which is here repeated in its original context; but elements were used in the published Silmarillion.

The Shibboleth of Feanor.

The case of the Quenya change of p to s.(1)

The history of the Eldar is now fixed and the adoption of Sindarin by the Exiled Noldor cannot be altered. Since Sindarin made great use of p, the change p > s must have occurred in Noldorin Quenya in Valinor before the rebellion and exile of the Noldor, though not necessarily long before it (in Valinorian reckoning of time). The change cannot therefore be explained as a development (that is a sound-substitution of s for an unfamiliar p) in Quenya of the Third Age: either due to the Elves ]