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Old 06-18-2018, 11:50 AM   #2
Findegil
King's Writer
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
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My compliment, you managed this difficult chapter very nicely. I rather have additions than criticism:

RS-SL-01: I think we should add here a passage from The Heirs of Elendil:
Quote:
… but the hope of Elves and Men was that these things might never come to pass.

RS-SL-01.5{Valandil took up his abode in Annúminas, but}<The Heirs of Elendil In the tenth year of the Third Age Valandil being come to manhood took up the kingship of Arnor and dwelt at Annuminas by Lake Nenuial.> [u]But[/b] his folk were diminished, and of the Númenóreans and of the Men of Eriador there remained now too few to people the land or to maintain all the places that Elendil had built; in Dagorlad, and in Mordor, and upon the Gladden Fields many had fallen.>
RS-SL-10: We have a bit more info about Queen Berúthiel. In addition to the letter that Christopher Tolkien re-tells we have an interview with Daphne Castell that you may find here. Tolkien say there about Berúthiel:
Quote:
... I really don’t know anything of her—you remember Aragorn’s allusion in Book I (page 325) to the cats of Queen Berúthiel, that could find their way home on a blind night? She just popped up, and obviously called for attention, but I don’t really know anything certain about her; though, oddly enough, I have a notion that she was the wife of one of the ship-kings of Pelargir. She loathed the smell of the sea, and fish, and the gulls. Rather like Skadi, the giantess, who came to the gods in Valhalla, demanding a recompense for the accidental death of her father. She wanted a husband. The gods all lined up behind a curtain, and she selected the pair of feet that appealed to her most. She thought she’d got Baldur, the beautiful god, but it turned out to be Njord, the sea-god, and after she’d married him, she got absolutely fed up with the seaside life, and the gulls kept her awake, and finally she went back to live in Jotunheim.
Well, Berúthiel went back to live in the inland city, and went to the bad (or returned to it—she was a black Númenorean in origin, I guess). She was one of these people who loathe cats, but cats will jump on them and follow them about—you know how sometimes they pursue people who hate them? I have a friend like that. I’m afraid she took to torturing them for amusement, but she kept some and used them—trained them to go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify them.”
I think we should add part of this to our telling of the story:
Quote:
RS-SL-09.5<Appendix A With Tarannon, the twelfth kingRS-SL-09.6<editorial addition of Gondor>, began the line of the Ship-kings, who built navies and extended the sway of Gondor along the coasts west and south of the Mouths of Anduin. To commemorate his victories as Captain of the Hosts, Tarannon took the crown in the name of Falastur 'Lord of the Coasts'.>
RS-SL-10<The Ist. Note 7 {She}Queen Berúthiel was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, {twelfth King of Gondor (Third Age 830-913) and first of the ‘Ship-kings’, who took the crown in the name of Falastur ‘Lord of the Coasts,’ and was} the first childless king{ (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, ii and iv)}. Berúthiel lived in the King's House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin. RS-SL-10.2<The Realms of Tolkien She loathed the smell of the sea, and fish, and the gulls.> RS-SL-10.3<The Realms of Tolkien {Well,}Therefore Beruthiel went back to live in the inland city, and went to the bad (or returned to it -- she was a Black Numenorean in origin{, I guess}).> She hated all making, all colors and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. RS-SL-10.4<The Realms of Tolkien She was one of these people who loathe cats, but cats will jump on them and follow them about{ -- you know how sometimes they pursue people who hate them? I have a friend like that. I'm afraid she}. She took to torturing them for amusement, but she kept some and used them: trained them to go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify them.> She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things that men wish most to keep hidden, setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. RS-SL-11 {What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except to the ending, which states that her}Her name was erased from the Book of the Kings, but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men's speech. {and that} King Tarannon had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.>
Connected to this I would point out that the mentioning of the the Queen Berúthiel as a Black Númenorian makes probably this the first episode of the struggle for Umbar. It seems logical that building up the fleet as Tarannon Falastur did would bring him in contact with Umbar and the Black Númenorians. But as it seems his approach was ‘diplomatic’ probably trying to get hold of Umbar or at least lasting friendship or better relations by marriage of a noble from that city. But that failed, as the marriage was unhappy and childless and ended by Falastur murdering Berúthiel and her cats by setting them alone adrift in a ship. That this provoked renewed hostility in Umbar that let in the end to Mardils invasion is not to be wondered about.
As a consequence of this I would move the complete passage quoted above to a slightly later place just before RS-SL-21. I know that this is against the chronological order, but it is the easiest way to make the connection just explained clearer.

RS-SL-18: Here we give an account of the Dwarves still journeying along the Great Road. That is good placed and well edited, but the passage ‘as they had done for long years before Hobbits came to the Shire’ most in my opinion be changed. I would simply remove ‘before the Hobbits came to the shire’. Whatever reference we take for the ‘long years’ it is right since the Great Road was used if not made by the Dwarves for their trade between the different realms even before the rising of the Sun.

RS-SL-26: This case is similar to the last, so here we might leave the allusion to the future stand, so for the moment I think we should remove the following bit at the end ‘, before the coming of the Dwarves exiled from Moria and the invasion of the Dragon’.

RS-SL-29: I think we should add here where these Hobbits settled. After this I think we should use a part from Of Dwarves and Men:
Quote:
The Harfoots were the first clan of Hobbits to enter Eriador{.}>RS-SL-29.5<LotR, Prologue , and roamed over Eriador as far as Weather Top while the others were still in Wilderland.> RS-SL-30<HoME 12: TY4 The Fallohides, a clan of the Periannath, crossed into Eriador and came down from the North along the River Hoarwell. About the same time the Stoors, another clan, came over the Redhorn Pass and moved RS-SL-30.1<LotR, Appendix B to the Angle or >south towards Dunland RS-SL-30.2<LotR, Prologue ; and there many of them long dwelt between Tharbad and the borders of Dunland>.>
RS-SL-30.2<HoME 12; Of Dwarves and Men Hobbits {on the other hand }were in nearly all respects normal Men, but of very short stature. They were called 'halflings'; but this refers to the normal height of men of Numenorean descent and of the Eldar (especially those of Noldorin descent), which appears to have been about seven of our feet.{[Footnote to the text: 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.]]} Their height at the periods concerned was usually more than three feet for men, though very few ever exceeded three foot six; women seldom exceeded three feet. They were not as numerous or variable as ordinary Men, but evidently more numerous and adaptable to different modes of life and habitat than the Drûgs, and when they are first encountered in the histories already showed divergences in colouring, stature, and build, and in their ways of life and preferences for different types of country to dwell in{ (see the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, p. 12)}. In their unrecorded past they must have been a primitive, indeed 'savage' people,[Footnote to the text: In the original sense of 'savage'; they were by nature of gentle disposition, neither cruel nor vindictive.] but when we meet them they had (in varying degrees) acquired many arts and customs by contact with Men, and to a less extent with Dwarves and Elves. With Men of normal stature they recognized their close kinship, whereas Dwarves or Elves, whether friendly or hostile, were aliens, with whom their relations were uneasy and clouded by fear.[Footnote to the text: 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.'] RS-SL-30.4{Bilbo's}The statement {(The Lord of the Rings I.162)[Footnote to the text: ['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.]]} that the cohabitation of Big Folk and Little Folk in one settlement at Bree was peculiar and nowhere else to be found was probably true {in his time (}at the end of the Third Age{)};[Footnote to the text: 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.] but it would seem that actually Hobbits had liked to live with or near to Big Folk of friendly kind, who with their greater strength protected them from many dangers and enemies and other hostile Men, and received in exchange many services. For it is remarkable that the western Hobbits preserved no trace or memory of any language of their own. The language they spoke when they entered Eriador was evidently adopted from the Men of the Vales of Anduin (related to the Atani, {/ in particular to those of the House of Beor [>} of the Houses of Hador and of Beor{]}); and after their adoption of the Common Speech they retained many words of that origin. This indicates a close association with Big Folk; though the rapid adoption of the Common Speech in Eriador[Footnote to the text: When they entered Eriador (early in the second {century}[millennium] 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. RS-SL-30.6{In Bilbo's time}At the end of the Thrid Age 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).]}] shows Hobbits to have been specially adaptable in this respect. As does also the divergence of the Stoors, who had associated with Men of different sort before they came to the Shire.
The vague tradition preserved by the Hobbits of the Shire was that they had dwelt once in lands by a Great River, but long ago had left them, and found their way through or round high mountains, when they no longer felt at ease in their homes because of the multiplication of the Big Folk and of a shadow of fear that had fallen on the Forest. This evidently reflects the troubles of Gondor in the earlier part of the Third Age. The increase in Men was not the normal increase of those with whom they had lived in friendship, but the steady increase of invaders from the East, further south held in check by Gondor, but in the North beyond the bounds of the Kingdom harassing the older 'Atanic' inhabitants, and even in places occupying the Forest and coming through it into the Anduin valley. But the shadow of which the tradition spoke was not solely due to human invasion. Plainly the Hobbits had sensed, even before the Wizards and the Eldar had become fully aware of it, the awakening of Sauron and his occupation of Dol Guldur.[Footnote to the text: 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.>
RS-SL-31<ORP Even as the first shadows were felt in Mirkwood …
RS-SL-30.3: I removed ‘on the other hand’ since it has lost its reference which was the passage about the Drûg.
RS-SL-30.4: I think we have to remove Bilbo here and of course the editorial reference to LotR.
RS-SL-30.6: I replaced ‘Bilbo’s time’ by ‘the end of the Third Age’.
RS-SL-30.8: I removed this editorial note but made the correction earlier in the text.

RS-SL-31 to RS-SL-34: I see that we have a chapter in volume 3 about the Istari where we can address a many things easier, but we maybe should at least mention somewhere here or in the Second Age chapter the name ‘Blue Wizards Ithryn Luin’ maybe here with an allusion that Saruman journey with them into the east.
In addition I think we should add here the scene of Círdan giving Narya to Gandalf. I suggest to take that from The Rings of Power since we might repeat the scene in volume 3 with in the essay The Istari.

One last point:
RS-SL-08, RS-SL-09.5, RS-SL-19, RS-SL-21: We should discuss if we will not in these cases take the very similar passages from The Heirs of Elendil. I agree that Appendix A has additional information, but we could add these into the wording of The Heirs of Elendil, if necessary. On the other hand we might consider taking The Heirs of Elendil and update it as part of volume 3 behind The Line of Elros. If we do that then here Appendix A is the better source.

Respectfully
Findegil

Last edited by Findegil; 06-18-2018 at 02:24 PM.
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