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I tend to agree with Robert Foster and Hammond and Scull that Treebeard's Great Darkness refers to a time of Morgoth's influence in Middle-earth.
If this is true Treebeard's story of the Entwives is interesting: 'When the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild' the Ents and the Entwives walked together and housed together. But their hearts did not go on growing in the same way, and the Entwives gave their minds also to the 'meads in the Sunshine.' Then the Darkness came in the North, and the Entwives move.
There was seemingly Sun and seasons before Morgoth exerted this influence in Middle-earth (though I suppose this sequence could be more fluid). Treebeard also relates that the Elves began waking trees up and teaching them to speak-- but then the Great Darkness came, and the Elves passed over the Sea, or fled into far valleys (Treebeard implies that Orcs were 'made', or first appeared at least, in the Great Darkness as well).
In Myths Transformed however, the idea seems different: in Text II Melkor darkens the World with great clouds, knowing that the coming of the Children is imminent. The Moon and Stars are invisible in the North, Day is dim. Manwe and Varda strive against the Clouds but Melkor closes the veil. Then comes the Great Wind of Manwe, rending the veil -- the stars shine, seemingly terribly bright. 'It is in the dark just before that the Elves awake. The first thing they see in the dark is the stars.' Melkor brings up glooms out of the east, and the stars fade away West.
'Just before what' is the question. And I think the meaning is just before Manwe has achieved the rending of the clouds, that is, or at least about the same time, so that the Quendi can first see the stars despite Morgoth's plan. In Text V indeed at the time when the Valar removed to Aman, 'it [darkness and diminishment of growth) was due to obscurations devised by Melkor: cloud and smokes (a volcanic era!).
In the Quenta Simarillion of HME V, this 'Great Darkness' would seem to be the time discussed in §18 Of the Coming of The Elves, where Morgoth's 'realm spread now ever southward over the Middle-earth' (though in this version it is said that although Morgoth made many monsters of divers kinds and shapes 'yet the Orcs were not made until he had looked upon the Elves.'). Treebeard's words do not seem to be in reference to a time after Morgoth's return, because the Hiding of Valinor followed this, and the Noldor returned to Middle-earth (again, as Treebeard says when the Darkness came the Elves passed over Sea, or fled)
According to the Later Annals of Valinor (HME V) this seems to fit: '... and he made his fortress at Utumna in the North; but he held sway with violence and the lands were yet more broken in that time.'
In the (later) Annals of Aman (HME X): 'Long the Quendi dwelt in their first home by the water under the Stars' and when they had dwelt three hundred and thirty five years Orome first heard the Elves. Melkor had been sowing fear, but he was taken captive before the Great march.
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