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Old 09-04-2017, 11:12 PM   #6
Findegil
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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I have forgotten to add one important bit from Of Dwarves and Men:
Quote:
<Concerning the Dwarves; passage (e) Then Aulė took the Seven Dwarves and laid them to rest under stone in far-sundered places, and beside each he laid his mate, save only beside the Eldest, and he lay alone. And Aule returned to Valinor and waited long as best he might. But it is not known when Durin or his brethren first awoke, though some think that it was at the time of the departure of the Eldar over sea.>
DE-EX-07.2<Of Dwarves and Men, HoME 12 In the Dwarvish traditions of the Third Age the names of the places where each of the Seven Ancestors had 'awakened' were remembered; but only two of them were known to Elves and Men of the West: the most westerly, the awakening place of the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broadbeams; and that of the ancestor of the Longbeards,[Footnote to the text: He alone had no companions. DE-EX-07.3{; cf. 'he slept alone' (III.352). [The reference is to the beginning of Appendix A, III. The passage in the text is difficult to interpret. My father refers here to four places of awakening of the Seven Ancestors of the Dwarves: those of 'the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broadbeams', 'the ancestor of the Longbeards', 'the Ironfists and Stiffbeards', and 'the Blacklocks and Stonefoots'. (None of these names of the other six kindreds of the Dwarves has ever been given before. Since the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broadbeams awoke in the Ered Lindon, these kindreds must be presumed to be the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost.) It seems that he was here referring to Durin's having 'slept alone' in contrast to the other kindreds, whose Fathers were laid to sleep in pairs. If this is so, it is a different conception from that cited in XI.213, where Iluvatar 'commanded Aule to lay the fathers of the Dwarves severally in deep places, each with his mate, save Durin the eldest who had none.' On the subject of the 'mates' of the Fathers of the Dwarves see XI.211-13. - In the margin of the typescript my father wrote later (against the present note): '}He wandered widely after awakening: his people were Dwarves that joined him from other kindreds west and east.{'; and at the head of the page he suggested that the legend of the Making of the Dwarves should be altered (indeed very radically altered) to a form in which other Dwarves were laid to sleep near to the Fathers.]}] the eldest in making and awakening. The first had been in the north of the Ered Lindon, the great eastern wall of Beleriand, of which the Blue Mountains of the Second and later ages were the remnant; the second had been Mount Gundabad (in origin a Khuzdul name), which was therefore revered by the Dwarves, DE-EX-07.4{and its occupation in the Third Age by the Orks of Sauron was one of the chief reasons for their great hatred of the Orks.[Footnote to the text: [In the rejected conclusion of note 21 the place of the awakening of the ancestor of the Longbeards was 'a valley in the Ered Mithrin' (the Grey Mountains in the far North). There has of course been no previous reference to this ancient significance of Mount Gundabad. That mountain originally appeared in the chapter The Clouds Burst in The Hobbit, where it is told that the Goblins 'marched and gathered by hill and valley, going ever by tunnel or under dark, until around and beneath the great mountain Gundabad of the North, where was their capital, a vast host was assembled'; and it is shown on the map of Wilderland in The Hobbit as a great isolated mass at the northern end of the Misty Mountains where the Grey Mountains drew towards them. In The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A (III), Gundabad appears in the account of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs late in the Third Age, where the Dwarves 'assailed and sacked one by one all the strongholds of the Orcs that they could [find] from Gundabad to the Gladden' (the word 'find' was erroneously dropped in the Second Edition).]]} The other two places were eastward, at distances as great or greater than that between the Blue Mountains and Gundabad: the arising of the Ironfists and Stiffbeards, and that of the Blacklocks and Stonefoots. Though these four points were far sundered the Dwarves of different kindreds were in communication, and in the early ages often held assemblies of delegates at Mount Gundabad. In times of great need even the most distant would send help to any of their peopleDE-EX-07.5{; as was the case in the great War against the Orks (Third Age 2793 to 2799)}. Though they were loth to migrate and make permanent dwellings or 'mansions' far from their original homes, except under great pressure from enemies or after some catastropheDE-EX-07.6{ such as the ruin of Beleriand}, they were great and hardy travellers and skilled road-makers; also, all the kindreds shared a common language.[Footnote to the text: According to their legends their begetter, Aule the Vala, had made this for them and had taught it to the Seven Fathers before they were laid to sleep until the time for their awakening should come. After their awakening this language (as all languages and all other things in Arda) changed in time, and divergently in the mansions that were far-sundered. But the change was so slow and the divergence so small that even in the Third Age converse between all Dwarves in their own tongue was easy. As they said, the change in Khuzdul as compared with the tongue of the Elves, and still more with those of Men, was 'like the weathering of hard rock compared with the melting of snow.']>
Since they were to come in the days of the power of Melkor, Aulė made the Dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of Men, yet not for ever. DE-EX-08<HoME 11; substitution to QS $5. The Naugrim were ever, as they still remain, ...
Porbably we also should do something with the informtion from the footnote that 'other Dwarves were laid to sleep near to the Fathers'. But I hesitate about that in the moment.

Respectfully
Findegil
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