• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1638 0

Faithful who fled from the wrack of Númenor to Middle-earth. [Author’s note.] – The story of the Ring of Barahir is told in The Silmarillion, Chapter 19, and its later history in The Lord of the Rings Appendix A (I, iii and v). Of ‘the great Axe of Tuor’ there is no mention in The Silmarillion, but it is named and described in the original ‘Fall of Gondolin’ (1916 – 17, see p. 6), where it is said that in Gondolin Tuor carried an axe rather than a sword, and that he named it in the speech of the people of Gondolin Dramborleg. In a list of names accompanying the tale Dramborleg is translated ‘Thudder-Sharp’: ‘the axe of Tuor that smote both a heavy dint as of a club and cleft as a sword’.

II

ALDARION AND ERENDIS

The Mariner’s Wife

Meneldur was the son of Tar-Elendil, the fourth King of Númenor. He was the King’s third child, for he had two sisters, named Silmarien and Isilmë. The elder of these was wedded to Elatan of Andúnië, and their son was Valandil, Lord of Andúnië, from whom came long after the lines of the Kings of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth.

Meneldur was a man of gentle mood, without pride, whose exercise was rather in thought than in deeds of the body. He loved dearly the land of Númenor and all things in it, but he gave no heed to the Sea that lay all about it; for his mind looked further than Middle-earth: he was enamoured of the stars and the heavens. All that he could gather of the lore of the Eldar and Edain concerning Ea¨ and the deeps that lay about the Kingdom of Arda he studied, and his chief delight was in the watching of the stars. He built a tower in the Forostar (the northernmost region of the island) where the airs were clearest, from which by night he would survey the heavens and observe all the movements of the lights of the firmament. 1

When Meneldur received the Sceptre he removed, as he must, from the Forostar, and dwelt in the great house of the Kings in Armenelos. He proved a good and wise king, though he never ceased to yearn for days in which he might enrich his knowledge of the heavens. His wife was a woman of great beauty, named Almarian. She was the daughter of Vëantur, Captain of the King’s Ships under Tar-Elendil; and though she herself loved ships and the sea no more than most women of the land her son followed after Vëantur her father, rather than after Meneldur.

The son of Meneldur and Almarian was Anardil, afterwards renowned among the Kings of Númenor as Tar-Aldarion. He had two sisters, younger than he: Ailinel and Almiel, of whom the elder married Orchaldor, a descendant of the House of Hador, son of Hatholdir, who was close in friendship with Meneldur; and the son of Orchaldor and Ailinel was Soronto, who comes later into the tale. 2

Aldarion, for so he is called in all tales, grew swiftly to a man of great stature, strong and vigorous in mind and body, golden-haired as his mother, ready to mirth and generous, but prouder than his father and ever more bent on his own will. From the first he loved the Sea, and his mind was turned to the craft of ship-building. He had little liking for the north country, and spent all the time that his father would grant by the shores of the sea, especially near Rómenna, where was the chief haven of Númenor, the greatest shipyards, and the most skilled shipwrights. His father did little to hinder him for many years, being well-pleased that Aldarion should have exercise for his hardihood and work for thought and hand.

Aldarion was much loved by Vëantur his mother’s father, and he dwelt often in Vëantur’s house on the southern side of the firth of Rómenna. That house had its own quay, to which many small boats were always moored, for Vëantur would never journey by land if he could by water; and there as a child Aldarion learned to row, and later to manage sail. Before he was full grown he could captain a ship of many men, sailing from haven to haven.

It happened on a time that Vëantur said to his grandson: ‘Anardilya, the spring is drawing nigh, and also the day of your full age’ (for in that April Aldarion would be twenty-five