Mîms Klage / The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim, the Dwarf, Part 4

Did I sleep long? I know not how much time passed. The forge-fire was cold, but choking smoke alarmed me. Men came and robbed everything that I owned: the ore that I long had delved from the rock, the piled gems; and they bore my chest away. Like a rat they smoked me out too, and with mocking song set me to run like a wild beast, through the burning thorns and heather about my deep home. They laughed as I kicked the hot ashes, and the wind snatches away my curses. My reddened eyes could find no path; and all I could save was a sack of hand-tools and, in its black sheath under my tattered mantle, my secret knife with poisoned runes on its blade. Oft have I sharpened it, spitting on the cutting edge until it shone under the cruel stars in dark and dreary places.

So they took from Mim all his memories and all the joyful leaps and bounds of his mind, making of them gems for their sword hilts, rings for greedy fingers [and moons and stars] and artless ornaments for the breasts of proud ladies. They traded them for petty kingdoms and false friendships; they lusted for them; they killed for them and blackened the gold with the blood of their kin. There is a fire in the memories of old dwarves, and a power goes out from their slender hands that drives Men to madness, though they know it not.

That answers that - we've circled back to Mim in his sandpit with his dagger, mourning the loss of his treasures, so all the foregoing was a flashback. The mention of curses and madness sounds a lot like his actions in Nargothrond, but I think every version has him die by Hurin's hand there, and anyway the treasures of the Noldor weren't made by him from ore and mined jewels. So the most plausible reading is that the "Menschen" are actually Orcs on Amon Rudh.

One line has me so baffled that I've bracketed it: the German reads "Ringe für gierige Finger und Monde und Sterne und kunstlosen Schmuch fur die Buste hochmutiger Weiber." I'm comfortable with the translation, and without "und Monde und Sterne" it makes perfect sense (gems for swords, rings for fingers and brooches for women). But what does "and moons and stars" mean here? Are they more jewels for the women? Is this a German idiom?

In any case, there's one (long) paragraph to go, in which we not only have the phrase "kleine Zwerg" - "petty-dwarf" - but the only conclusive link to the Legendarium: "eine Blute mit Tau darauf, so wie er einst glanzte am Tarn Aeluin". A flower with dew on it, as once shone beside Tarn Aeluin.

hS