[Lalwendë]

"Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them,"said Elrond, "not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could tell you. These must have been written on a midsummer's eve in a crescent moon, a long while ago."

How annoying would moon-letters be?! Imagine you had a store of old Dwarven maps or other documents and you wanted to study what was written in them. If there were good moon-letters included then you would have to take a chance and hope that you chanced to look at that document during the right moon phase and on the right day of the year; if you hoped to undergo a systematic study to check if any documents included moon-letters then you'd have to get out all your Dwarven documents every night of the year and try them in the moonlight. How much more annoying if it happened to be a cloudy or rainy night!

I suppose that this is one of the more 'magical' aspects of The Hobbit, which does not bear up to the close scrutiny that a close reading might bring to the text.

Originally Posted by Raynor

And a question: Elrond, as master of the house, is reffered to as "elf-friend" - shouldn't the title actually be "man-friend"? Was it a slip of a pen or did Tolkien weigh in his Mannish lineage?

Good point! Why would Elrond be referred to as an 'elf-friend' if he was an Elf? Surely we could expect that he would be friends with lots of Elves, unless he was a bit like Eol, of course. It would be more appropriate to refer to a Man as an 'Elf-friend' (the name 'Alfred' means 'elf-friend').

He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.

It was this description of Elrond that placed in my mind the image (which turns out to be incorrect) of him having a beard and grey hair. 'Noble' to me often signifies grey hair, as does 'venerable'. To use the simile "as wise as a wizard" immediately brings to mind facial hair, as we've just met Gandalf, who has a splendid beard. So of course, the image of Elrond has stayed with me and nothing I read to the contrary will shift it from the depths of my mind where it took root at a formative stage!