[Man-of-the-Wold]

My goodness that's a lot of chatter in less than 24hrs. Thanks for the compliments on the Jan. 25 Post. I'll try to remember to figure out how to do Encylpedia submissions; your minor changes, please.

I'm much too fuzzy headed to organize all thoughts, but let me say:

1. That the Beleriandic references to Dorwinion and the Dowinion of The Hobbit may not be merely coincidental, but I think that that has to go into the whatever category. My impression of the First Age is that such far-flung trade would have been quite extraordinary.

2. I agree and would really discount the possibility that the reference to kinfolk to the south could mean Lothlorien. Though, remember, this is still 80 years before the comment in the LoTR, and Celeborn may have referred more to direct political communication, not incidental contact among merchants. I know that the original Sindarin colonists were sort of anti-Noldor, back-to-basics types, but I don't see where by this time Thranduil would have necessarily had serious grivances against Galadriel. I would if anything attribute the state of in communicado to Lothlorien's insularity, as a rather unique place.

3. As for the Old Forest Road, it was rumoured to have had some deterioration at its Eastern end, but Gandalf was wrong about Rohan's equine tribute to Mordor, too. Whatever, the nature of the encroachment my marshes or what not, it may not have been very troubling to more regular wayfarers, who had found less obvious, alternative ruouts. It was also probably the sort of development that came and went. Surely, rather than the proprietary Elf Path, it was subsequently the road of choice, with the Woodmen at one end and the Men of Dale/Laketown helping to maintain the eastern side.

4. As for middleMen, the Wood-Elves were clearly undertaking a huge part of their commerce through Laketown. Barrels are barrels. Doesn't seem the Lakemen had many other customers left, to boot.

5. As for the Elfin kinfolk to the South, I would again submit that even from Laketown to Dorwinion was an extreme distance for the transport of heavy commodities, and I did not mean to suggest that the kinfolk were near southern Mirkwood, but rather the mid-section. Mirkwood was really rather long from North to South, and except for the areas that became East Lorien, I would assume that like the Woodmen and Thranduil's people, that Elves could live in other fringe areas. Northmen had once passed west from the area of the East Bight. The spiders encountered by Bilbo may have been there at the Necromancer's behest, specifically because of Elven Kingdom. In any case, there are long stretches of areas along the Running River, which the map shows as blank in a way that suggests that we don't know what's there. The kinfolk could have been in many potential locations East and South of Thranduil's realm.