The
language represented in this history by English was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the
Third Age. In the course of that age it had become the native language of
nearly all the speaking-peoples (save the Elves) who dwelt within the bounds of
the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor; that is along all the coasts from Umbar
northwards to the Bay of Forochel, and inland as far as the Misty Mountains and
the Ephel Dúath. It had also spread
north up the Anduin, occupying the lands west of the River and east of the
mountains as far as the Gladden Fields.
At the time
of the War of the Ring at the end of the age these were still its bounds as a
native tongue, though large parts of Eriador were now deserted, and few Men
dwelt on the shore of the Anduin between the Gladden and Rauros.
A few of
the ancient Wild Men still lurked in the Drúadan Forest in Anórien; and in the
hills of Dunland a remnant lingered of an old people, the former inhabitants of
much of Gondor. These clung to their own languages; while in the plains of
Rohan there dwelt now a Northern people, the Rohirrim, who had come into that
land some five hundred years earlier. But the Westron was used as a second
language of intercourse by all those who still retained a speech of their own,
even by the Elves, not only in Arnor and Gondor but throughout the vales of
Anduin, and eastward to the further eaves of Mirkwood. Even among the Wild Men
and the Dunlendings who shunned other folk there were some that could speak it,
though brokenly.
OF THE ELVES
The Elves
far back in the Elder Days became divided into two main branches: the
West-elves (the Eldar) and the
East-elves. Of the latter kind were most of the elven-folk of Mirkwood and
Lórien; but their languages do not appear in this history, in which all the
Elvish names and words are of Eldarin
form.[81]
Of the Eldarin tongues two are found in this
book: the High-elven or Quenya, the
Grey-elven or Sindarin. The
High-elven was an ancient tongue of Eldamar beyond the Sea, the first to be
recorded in writing. It was no longer a birth-tongue but had become, as it
were, an 'Elven-latin', still used for ceremony, and for high matters of lore
and song, by the High Elves, who had returned in exile to Middle-earth at the
end of the First Age.
The
Grey-elven was in origin akin to Quenya:
for it was the language of those Eldar who, coming to the shores of
Middle-earth, had not passed over the Sea but had lingered on the coasts in the
country of Beleriand. There Thingol Greycloak of Doriath was their king, and in
the long twilight their tongue had changed with the changefulness of mortal
lands and had become far estranged from the speech of the Eldar from beyond the
Sea.
The Exiles,
dwelling among the more numerous Grey-elves, had adopted the Sindarin for daily use; and hence it was
the tongue of all those Elves and Elf-lords that appear in this history. For
these were all of Eldarin race, even where the folk that they ruled were of the
lesser kindreds. Noblest of all was the Lady Galadriel of the royal house of
Finarfin and sister of Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond. In the hearts of
the Exiles the yearning for the Sea was an unquiet never to be stilled; in the
hearts of the Grey-elves it slumbered, but once awakened it could not be
appeased.
of men
The Westron was a Mannish speech, though
enriched and softened under Elvish influence. It was in origin the language of
those whom the Eldar called the Atani
or Edain, 'Fathers of Men', being
especially the people of the Three Houses of the Elf-friends who came west into
Beleriand in the First Age, and aided the Eldar in the War of the Great Jewels
against the Dark Power of the North.
After the overthrow
of the Dark Power, in which Beleriand was for the most part drowned or broken,
it was granted as a reward to the Elf-friends that they also, as the Eldar,
might pass west over Sea. But since the Undying Realm was forbidden to them, a
great isle was set apart for them, most westerly of all mortal lands. The name
of that isle was Númenor
(Westernesse). Most of the Elf-friends, therefore, departed and dwelt in
Númenor, and there they became great and powerful, mariners of renown and lords
of many ships. They were fair of face and tall, and the span of their lives was
thrice that of the Men of Middle-earth. These were the Númenoreans, the Kings
of Men, whom the Elves called the Dúnedain.
The Dúnedain alone of all races of Men knew
and spoke an Elvish tongue; for their forefathers had learned the Sindarin
tongue, and this they handed on to their children as a matter of lore, changing
little with the passing of the years. And their men of wisdom learned also the
High-elven Quenya and esteemed it above all other tongues, and in it they made
names for many places of fame and reverence, and for many men of royalty and
great renown.[82]
But the
native speech of the Númenoreans remained for the most part their ancestral
Mannish tongue, the Adûnaic, and to this in the latter days of their pride
their kings and lords returned, abandoning the Elven-speech, save only those
few that held still to their ancient friendship with the Eldar. In the years of
their power the Númenoreans had maintained many forts and havens upon the
western coasts of Middle-earth for the help of their ships; and one of the
chief of these was at Pelargir near the Mouths of Anduin. There Adûnaic was
spoken, and mingled with many words of the languages of lesser men it became a
Common Speech that spread thence along the coasts among all that had dealings
with Westernesse.
After the
Downfall of Númenor, Elendil led the survivors of the Elf-friends back to the
North-western shores of Middle-earth. There many already dwelt who were in
whole or part of Númenorean blood; but few of them remembered the Elvish
speech. All told the Dúnedain were thus from the beginning far fewer in number
than the lesser men among whom they dwelt and whom they ruled, being lords of
long life and great power and wisdom. They used therefore the Common Speech in
their dealing with other folk and in the government of their wide realms; but
they enlarged the language and enriched it with many words drawn from the
Elven-tongues.
In the days
of the Númenorean kings this ennobled Westron speech spread far and wide, even
among their enemies; and it became used more and more by the Dúnedain
themselves, so that at the time of the War of the Ring the Elven-tongue was
known to only a small part of the peoples of Gondor, and spoken daily by fewer.
These dwelt mostly in Minas Tirith and the townlands adjacent, and in the land
of the tributary princes of Dol Amroth. Yet the names of nearly all places and
persons in the realm of Gondor were of Elvish form and meaning. A few were of
forgotten origin, and descended doubtless from days before the ships of the
Númenoreans sailed the Sea; among these were Umbar, Arnach and Erech;
and the mountain-names Eilenach and Rimmon. Forlong was also a name of the
same sort.
Most of the
Men of the northern regions of the Westlands were descended from the Edain of the First Age, or from their
close kin. Their languages were, therefore, related to the Adûnaic, and some
still preserved a likeness to the Common Speech. Of this kind were the peoples
of the upper vales of Anduin: the Beornings, and the Woodmen of Western
Mirkwood; and further north and east the Men of the Long Lake and of Dale. From
the lands between the Gladden and the Carrock came the folk that were known in
Gondor as the Rohirrim, Masters of Horses. They still spoke their ancestral
tongue, and gave new names in it to nearly all the places in their new country:
and they called themselves the Eorlings, or the Men of the Riddermark. But the
lords of that people used the Common Speech freely, and spoke it nobly after
the manner of their allies in Gondor; for in Gondor whence it came the Westron
kept still a more gracious and antique style.
Wholly
alien was the speech of the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest. Alien, too, or only
remotely akin, was the language of the Dunlendings. These were a remnant of the
peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White Mountains in ages past. The
Dead Men of Dunharrow were of their kin. But in the Dark Years others had
removed to the southern dales of the Misty Mountains; and thence some had
passed into the empty lands as far north as the Barrow-downs. From them came
the Men of Bree; but long before these had become subjects of the North Kingdom
of Arnor and had taken up the Westron tongue. Only in Dunland did Men of this
race hold to their old speech and manners: a secret folk, unfriendly to the
Dúnedain, hating the Rohirrim.
Of their
language nothing appears in this book, save the name Forgoil which they gave to the Rohirrim (meaning Strawheads, it is
said). Dunland and Dunlending are the names that the
Rohirrim gave to them, because they were swarthy and dark-haired; there is thus
no connexion between the word dunn in
these names and the Grey-elven word Dûn
'west'.
of hobbits
The Hobbits
of the Shire and of Bree had at this time, for probably a thousand years,
adopted the Common Speech. They used it in their own manner freely and
carelessly; though the more learned among them had still at their command a
more formal language when occasion required.
There is no
record of any language peculiar to Hobbits. In ancient days they seem always to
have used the languages of Men near whom, or among whom, they lived. Thus they
quickly adopted the Common Speech after they entered Eriador, and by the time
of their settlement at Bree they had already begun to forget their former
tongue. This was evidently a Mannish language of the upper Anduin, akin to that
of the Rohirrim; though the southern Stoors appear to have adopted a language
related to Dunlendish before they came north to the Shire.[83]
Of these
things in the time of Frodo there were still some traces left in local words
and names, many of which closely resembled those found in Dale or in Rohan.
Most notable were the names of days, months, and seasons; several other words
of the same sort (such as mathom and smial) were also still in common use,
while more were preserved in the place-names of Bree and the Shire. The
personal names of the Hobbits were also peculiar and many had come down from
ancient days.
Hobbit was the name usually applied by the Shire-folk
to all their kind. Men called them Halflings
and the Elves Periannath. The origin
of the word hobbit was by most
forgotten. It seems, however, to have been at first a name given to the
Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a word
preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla
'hole-builder'.
OF OTHER RACES
Ents. The most ancient people surviving in the Third
Age were the Onodrim or Enyd. Ent was the form of their name in
the language of Rohan. They were known to the Eldar in ancient days, and to the
Eldar indeed the Ents ascribed not their own language but the desire for
speech. The language that they had made was unlike all others: slow, sonorous,
agglomerated, repetitive, indeed longwinded; formed of a multiplicity of
vowel-shades and distinctions of tone and quantity which even the loremasters
of the Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing. They used it only among
themselves; but they had no need to keep it secret, for no others could learn
it.
Ents were, however, themselves skilled in
tongues, learning them swiftly and never forgetting them. But they preferred
the languages of the Eldar, and loved best the ancient High-elven tongue. The
strange words and names that the Hobbits record as used by Treebeard and other
Ents are thus Elvish, or fragments of Elf-speech strung together in
Ent-fashion.[84] Some are
Quenya: as Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna
Tumbaletaerëa Lómëanor, which may be rendered
'Forestmanyshadowed-deepvalleyblack Deepvalleyforested Gloomyland', and by
which Treebeard meant, more or less: 'there is a black shadow in the deep dales
of the forest'. Some are Sindarin: as Fangorn
'beard-(of)-tree', or Fimbrethil
'slender-beech'.
Orcs and the Black Speech. Orc is the form of the name that
other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan. In
Sindarin it was orch. Related, no
doubt, was the word uruk of the Black
Speech, though this was applied as a rule only to the great soldier-orcs that
at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard. The lesser kinds were called,
especially by the Uruk-hai, snaga
'slave'.
The Orcs
were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days. It is said
that they bad no language of their own, but took what they could of other
tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal
jargons, scarcely sufficient even for their own needs, unless it were for
curses and abuse. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even
their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were
groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little
use to them in intercourse between different tribes.
So it was
that in the Third Age Orcs used for communication between breed and breed the
Westron tongue; and many indeed of the older tribes, such as those that still
lingered in the North and in the Misty Mountains, had long used the Westron as
their native language, though in such a fashion as to make it hardly less
unlovely than Orkish. In this jargon tark, 'man of Gondor', was a debased form of tarkil, a Quenya word used in Westron for one of Númenorean
descent; see III, 54.
It is said that the Black Speech was devised by
Sauron in the Dark Years, and that he bad desired to make it the language of
all those that served him, but he failed in that purpose. From the Black
Speech, however, were derived many of the words that were in the Third Age
wide-spread among the Orcs, such as ghâsh
'fire', but after the first overthrow of Sauron this language in its ancient
form was forgotten by all but the Nazgûl. When Sauron arose again, it became
once more the language of Barad-dûr and of the captains of Mordor. The
inscription on the Ring was in the ancient Black Speech, while the curse of the
Mordor-orc in II, 53. was in the more debased form used by the soldiers of the
Dark Tower, of whom Grishnákh was the captain. Sharku in that tongue means old man.
Trolls. Troll
has been used to translate the Sindarin Torog.
In their beginning far back in the twilight of the Elder Days, these were
creatures of dull and lumpish nature and had no more language than beasts. But
Sauron had made use of them, teaching them what little they could learn, and
increasing their wits with wickedness. Trolls therefore took such language as
they could master from the Orcs; and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a
debased form of the Common Speech.
But at the end of the Third Age a troll-race
not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of
Mordor. Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them
none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were
not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind
quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and
power. Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell
race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the
older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of
Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they
knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr.
Dwarves. The Dwarves are a race apart. Of their strange
beginning, and why they are both like and unlike Elves and Men, the
Silmarillion tells; but of this tale the lesser Elves of Middle-earth had no
knowledge, while the tales of later Men are confused with memories of other
races.
They are a
tough, thrawn race for the most part, secretive, laborious, retentive of the memory
of injuries (and of benefits), lovers of stone, of gems, of things that take
shape under the hands of the craftsmen rather than things that live by their
own life. But they are not evil by nature, and few ever served the Enemy of
free will, whatever the tales of Men may have alleged. For Men of old lusted
after their wealth and the work of their hands, and there has been enmity
between the races.
But in the
Third Age dose friendship still was found in many places between Men and
Dwarves; and it was according to the nature of the Dwarves that, travelling and
labouring and trading about the lands, as they did after the destruction of
their ancient mansions, they should use the languages of men among whom they
dwelt. Yet in secret (a secret which unlike the Elves, they did not willingly
unlock, even to their friends) they used their own strange tongue, changed
little by the years; for it had become a tongue of lore rather than a
cradle-speech, and they tended it and guarded it as a treasure of the past. Few
of other race have succeeded in learning it. In this history it appears only in
such place-names as Gimli revealed to his companions; and in the battle-cry
which he uttered in the siege of the Hornburg. That at least was not secret,
and had been heard on many a field since the world was young. Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! 'Axes of
the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!'
Gimli's own
name, however, and the names of all his kin, are of Northern (Mannish) origin.
Their own secret and 'inner' names, their true names, the Dwarves have never
revealed to any one of alien race. Not even on their tombs do they inscribe
them.
In
presenting the matter of the Red Book, as a history for people of today to
read, the whole of the linguistic setting has been translated as far as
possible into terms of our own times. Only the languages alien to the Common
Speech have been left in their original form; but these appear mainly in the
names of persons and places.
The Common
Speech, as the language of the Hobbits and their narratives, has inevitably
been turned into modern English. In the process the difference between the
varieties observable in the use of the Westron has been lessened. Some attempt
has been made to represent these varieties by variations in the kind of English
used; but the divergence between the pronunciation and idiom of the Shire and
the Westron tongue in the mouths of the Elves or of the high men of Gondor was
greater than has been shown in this book. Hobbits indeed spoke for the most part
a rustic dialect, whereas in Gondor and Rohan a more antique language was used,
more formal and more terse.
One point
in the divergence may here be noted, since, though often important, it has
proved impossible to represent. The Westron tongue made in the pronouns of the
second person (and often also in those of the third) a distinction, independent
of number, between 'familiar' and 'deferential' forms. It was, however, one of
the peculiarities of Shire-usage that the deferential forms had gone out of
colloquial use. They lingered only among the villagers, especially of the
Westfarthing, who used them as endearments. This was one of the things referred
to when people of Gondor spoke of the strangeness of Hobbit-speech. Peregrin
Took, for instance, in his first few days in Minas Tirith used the familiar
forms to people of all ranks, including the Lord Denethor himself. This may
have amused the aged Steward, but it must have astonished his servants. No
doubt this free use of the familiar forms helped to spread the popular rumour
that Peregrin was a person of very high rank in his own country.[85]
It will be noticed that Hobbits such as Frodo,
and other persons such as Gandalf and Aragorn, do not always use the same
style. This is intentional. The more learned and able among the Hobbits had
some knowledge of 'book-language', as it was termed in the Shire; and they were
quick to note and adopt the style of those whom they met. It was in any case
natural for much-travelled folk to speak more or less after the manner of those
among whom they found themselves, especially in the case of men who, like
Aragorn, were often at pains to conceal their origin and their business. Yet in those days all the enemies of the Enemy revered
what was ancient, in language no less than in other matters, and they took
pleasure in it according to their knowledge. The Eldar, being above all skilled
in words, had the command of many styles, though they spoke most naturally in a
manner nearest to their own speech, one even more antique than that of Gondor.
The Dwarves, too, spoke with skill, readily adapting themselves to their
company, though their utterance seemed to some rather harsh and guttural. But
Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their
language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it I do not
suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to
find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded;
dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to
retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid
sounds strong.
Translation of this kind
is, of course, usual because inevitable in any narrative dealing with the past.
It seldom proceeds any further. But I have gone beyond it. I have also
translated all Westron names according to their senses. When English names or titles
appear in this book it is an indication mat names in the Common Speech were
current at the time, beside, or instead of, those in alien (usually Elvish)
languages.
The Westron names were
as a rule translations of older names: as Rivendell, Hoarwell, Silverlode,
Langstrand, The Enemy, the Dark Tower. Some differed in meaning: as Mount Doom
for Orodruin 'burning mountain', or
Mirkwood for Taur e-Ndaedelos 'forest
of the great fear'. A few were alterations of Elvish names: as Lune and
Brandywine derived from Lhûn and Baranduin.
This procedure perhaps
needs some defence. It seemed to me that to present all the names in their
original forms would obscure an essential feature of the times as perceived by
the Hobbits (whose point of view I was mainly concerned to preserve): the
contrast between a wide-spread language, to them as ordinary and habitual as
English is to us, and the living remains of far older and more reverend
tongues. All names if merely transcribed would seem to modem readers equally
remote: for instance, if the Elvish name Imladris
and the Westron translation Karningul
had both been left unchanged. But to refer to Rivendell as Imladris was as if
one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot, except that the identity was
certain, while in Rivendell there still dwelt a lord of renown far older than
Arthur would be, were he still king at Winchester today.
The name of the Shire (Sûza) and all other places of die
Hobbits have thus been Englished. This was seldom difficult, since such names
were commonly made up of elements similar to those used in our simpler English
place-names; either words still current like hill or field; or a
little worn down like ton beside town. But some were derived, as already
noted, from old hobbit-words no longer in use, and these have been represented
by similar English things, such as wich,
or bottle 'dwelling', or michel 'great'.
In the case of persons,
however, Hobbit-names in the Shire and in Bree were for those days peculiar,
notably in the habit that had grown up, some centuries before this time, of
having inherited names for families. Most of these surnames had obvious meanings
in the current language, being derived from jesting nicknames, or from
place-names, or (especially in Bree) from the names of plants and trees.
Translation of these presented little difficulty; but there remained one or two
older names of forgotten meaning, and these I have been content to anglicize in
spelling: as Took for Tûk, or Boffin
for Bophîn.
I have treated Hobbit
first-names, as far as possible, in the same way. To their maid-children
Hobbits commonly gave the names of flowers or jewels. To their man-children they
usually gave names that had no meaning at all in their daily language; and some
of their women's names were similar. Of this kind are Bilbo, Bungo, Polo,
Lotho, Tanta, Nina, and so on. There are many inevitable but accidental
resemblances to names that we now have or know: for instance Otho, Odo, Drogo,
Dora, Cora, and the like. These names I have retained, though I have usually
anglicized them by altering their endings, since in Hobbit-names a was a masculine ending, and o and e were feminine.
In some old families,
especially those of Fallohide origin such as the Tooks and the Bolgers, it was,
however, the custom to give high-sounding first-names. Since most of these seem
to have been drawn from legends of the past, of Men as well as of Hobbits, and
many while now meaningless to Hobbits closely resembled the names of Men in the
Vale of Anduin, or in Dale, or in the Mark, I have turned them into those old
names, largely of Frankish and Gothic origin, that are still used by us or are
met in our histories. I have thus at any rate preserved the often comic
contrast between the first-names and surnames, of which the Hobbits themselves
were well aware. Names of classical origin have rarely been used; for the
nearest equivalents to Latin and Greek in Shire-lore were the Elvish tongues,
and these the Hobbits seldom used in nomenclature. Few of them at any time knew
'the languages of the kings', as they called them.
The names of the
Bucklanders were different from those of the rest of the Shire. The folk of the
Marish and their offshoot across the Brandywine were in many ways peculiar, as
has been told. It was from the former language of the southern Stoors, no
doubt, that they inherited many of their very odd names. These I have usually
left unaltered, for if queer now, they were queer in their own day. They had a
style that we should perhaps feel vaguely to be Celtic elements in England, I
have sometimes imitated the latter in my translation. Thus Bree, Combe (Coomb),
Archet, and Chetwood are modelled on relics of British nomenclature, chosen
according to sense: bree hill, chet "wood*. But only one personal
name has been altered in this way. Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that
this character's shortened name. Kali, meant in the Westron 'jolly, gay',
though it was actually an abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name
Kalimac.
I have not used names of
Hebraic or similar origin in my transpositions. Nothing in Hobbit-names
corresponds to this element in our names. Short names such as Sam, Tom, Tim,
Mat were common as abbreviations of actual Hobbit-names, such as Tomba, Tolma,
Matta, and the like. But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban and Ran.
These were shortenings of Banazîr and
Ranugad, originally nicknames,
meaning 'half-wise, simple' and 'stay-at-home', but being words that had fallen
out of colloquial use they remained as traditional names in certain families. I
have therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise and Hamfast,
modernizations of ancient English samwís
and hámfæst which corresponded
closely in meaning.
Having gone so far in my
attempt to modernize and make familiar the language and names of Hobbits, I
found myself involved in a further process. The Mannish languages that were
related to the Westron should, it seemed to me, be turned into forms related to
English. The language of Rohan I have accordingly made to resemble ancient
English, since it was related both (more distantly) to the Common Speech, and
(very closely) to the former tongue of the northern Hobbits, and was in
comparison with the Westron archaic. In the Red Book it is noted in several
places that when Hobbits heard the speech of Rohan they recognized many words
and felt the language to be akin to their own, so that it seemed absurd to
leave the recorded names and words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style.
In several cases I have
modernized the forms and spellings of place-names in Rohan: as in Dunharrow or Snowbourne; but I have not been consistent, for I have followed the
Hobbits. They altered the names that they heard in the same way, if they were
made of elements mat they recognized, or if they resembled place-names in the
Shire; but many they left alone, as I have done, for instance, in Edoras 'the courts'. For the same
reasons a few personal names have also been modernized, as Shadowfax and
Wormtongue.[86]
This assimilation also
provided a convenient way of representing the peculiar local hobbit-words that
were of northern origin. They have been given the forms that lost English words
might well have had, if they had come down to our day. Thus mathom is meant to recall ancient
English máthm, and so to represent
the relationship of the actual Hobbit kast
to R. kastu. Similarly smial (or smile) 'burrow' is a likely
form for a descendant of smygel, and
represents wen the relationship of Hobbit tran
to R. trahan. Sméagol and Déagol are
equivalents made up in the same way for the names Trahald 'burrowing, worming in', and Nahald 'secret' in the Northern tongues.
The still more northerly
language of Dale is in this book seen only in the names of the Dwarves that
came from that region and so used the language of the Men there, taking their
'outer' names in that tongue. It may be observed that in this book as in The Hobbit the form dwarves is used, although the dictionaries tell us that the plural
of dwarf is dwarfs. It should be dwarrows
(or dwerrows), if singular and plural
had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men or goose and geese. But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a
man, or even of a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among Men to
keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk-tales, where at
least a shadow of truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense-stories in which
they have become mere figures of fun. But in the Third Age something of their
old character and power is still glimpsed, if already a little dimmed: these
are the descendants of the Naugrim of the Elder Days, in whose hearts still
burns the ancient fire of Aulë the Smith, and the embers smoulder of their long
grudge against the Elves; and in whose hands still lives the skill in works of
stone that none have surpassed.
It is to mark this that
I have ventured to use the form dwarves,
and so remove them a little, perhaps, from the sillier tales of these latter
days. Dwarrows would have been
better; but I have used that form only in the name Dwarrowdelf, to represent the name of Moria in the Common Speech: Phurunargian. For that meant
'Dwarf-delving' and yet was already word of antique form. But Moria is an
Elvish name, and given without love; for the Eldar, though they might at need,
in their bitter wars with the Dark Power and his servants, contrive fortresses
underground, were not dwellers in such places of choice. They were lovers of
the green earth and the lights of heaven; and Moria in their tongue means the
Black Chasm. But the Dwarves themselves, and this name at least was never kept
secret, called it Khazad-dûm, the
Mansion of the Khazâd; for such is their own name for their own race, and has
been so, since Aulë gave it to them at their making in the deeps of time.
Elves has been
used to translate both Quendi, 'the
speakers', the High-elven name of all their kind, and Eldar, the name of the Three Kindreds that sought for the Undying
Realm and came there at the beginning of Days (save the Sindar only). This old word was indeed the only one available, and
was once fitted to apply to such memories of this people as Men preserved, or
to the making of Men's minds not wholly dissimilar. But it has been diminished,
and to many it may now suggest fancies either pretty or silly, as unlike to the
Quendi of old as are butterflies to the swift falcon – not that any of the
Quendi ever possessed wings of the body, as unnatural to them as to Men. They
were a race high and beautiful the older Children of the world, and among them
the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the
People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their
locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod; and their voices had more
melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard. They were valiant, but the
history of those that returned to Middle-earth in exile was grievous; and
though it was in far-off days crossed by the fate of the Fathers, their fate is
not that of Men. Their dominion passed long ago, and they dwell now beyond the
circles of the world, and do not return.
Note on three names: Hobbit, Gamgee, and Brandywine.
Hobbit is an invention. In the Westron the word used,
when this people was referred to at all, was banakil 'halfling'. But at this date the folk of the Shire and of
Bree used the word kuduk, which was
not found elsewhere. Meriadoc, however, actually records that the King of Rohan
used the word kûd-dûkan 'hole-dweller'. Since, as has been noted, the Hobbits
had once spoken a language closely related to that of the Rohirrim, it seems
likely that kuduk was a worn-down
form of kûd-dûkan. The latter I have translated, for reasons explained, by holbytla; and hobbit provides a word that might well be a worn-down form of holbytla, it that name had occurred in
our own ancient language.
Gamgee.
According to family tradition, set out in the Red Book, the surname Galbasi, or in reduced form Galpsi, came from the village of Galabas, popularly supposed to be
derived from galab- 'game' and an old
element bas-, more or less equivalent
to our wick, wich. Gamwich
(pronounced Gammidge) seemed
therefore a very fair rendering. However, in reducing Gammidgy to Gamgee, to represent
Galpsi, no reference was intended to
the connexion of Samwise with the family of Cotton, though a jest of that kind
would have been hobbit-like enough, had there been any warrant in their
language.
Cotton, in fact, represents Hlothran a fairly common village-name in the Shire, derived from hloth- 'a two-roomed dwelling or hole',
and ran(u) a small group of such
dwellings on a hillside. As a surname it may be an alteration of hlothram(a) 'cottager'. Hlothram, which I have rendered Cotman,
was the name of Farmer Cotton's grandfather.
Brandywine. The hobbit-names of this river were alterations of
the Elvish Baranduin (accented on and), derived from baran 'golden brown' and duin
'(large) river'. Of Baranduin
Brandywine seemed a natural corruption in modern times. Actually the older
hobbit-name was Branda-nîn
'border-water', which would have been more closely rendered by Marchbourn; but
by a jest that had become habitual, referring again to its colour, at this time
the river was usually called Bralda-hîm
'heady ale'.
It must be observed,
however, that when the Oldbucks (Zaragamba) changed their name to Brandybuck
(Brandagamba), the first element meant 'borderland', and Marchbuck would have
been nearer. Only a very bold hobbit would have ventured to call the Master of
Buckland Braldagamba in his hearing.