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By Root 1662 0

‘Silver Tree’ was abandoned: the second element of Celeborn (as the name of a person) was derived from the ancient adjectival form ornā ‘uprising, tall’, rather than from the related noun ornē ‘tree’. (Ornē was originally applied to straighter and more slender trees such as birches, whereas stouter, more spreading trees such as oaks and beeches were called in the ancient language galadā ‘great growth’ but this distinction was not always observed in Quenya and disappeared in Sindarin, where all trees came to be called galadh, and orn fell out of common use, surviving only in verse and songs and in many names both of persons and of trees.) That Celeborn was tall is mentioned in a note to the discussion of Númenórean Linear Measures, p. 371.

On occasional confusion of Galadriel’s name with the word galadh my father wrote:

When Celeborn and Galadriel became the rulers of the Elves of Lórien (who were mainly in origin Silvan Elves and called themselves the Galadhrim) the name of Galadriel became associated with trees, an association that was aided by the name of her husband, which also appeared to contain a tree-word; so that outside Lórien among those whose memories of the ancient days and Galadriel’s history had grown dim her name was often altered to Galadhriel. Not in Lórien itself.

It may be mentioned here that Galadhrim is the correct spelling of the name of the Elves of Lórien, and similarly Caras Galadhon. My father originally altered the voiced form of th (as in Modern English then) in Elvish names to d, since (as he wrote) dh is not used in English and looks uncouth. Afterwards he changed his mind on the point, but Galadrim and Caras Galadon remained uncorrected until after the appearance of the revised edition of The Lord of the Rings (in recent reprints the change has been made). These names are wrongly spelt in the entry alda in the Appendix to The Silmarillion.

PART THREE

THE THIRD AGE

I

THE DISASTER OF THE GLADDEN FIELDS

After the fall of Sauron, Isildur, the son and heir of Elendil, returned to Gondor. There he assumed the Elendilmir 1 as King of Arnor, and proclaimed his sovereign lordship over all the Dúnedain in the North and in the South; for he was a man of great pride and vigour. He remained for a year in Gondor, restoring its order and defining its bounds; 2 but the greater part of the army of Arnor returned to Eriador by the Númenórean road from the Fords of Isen to Fornost.

When he at last felt free to return to his own realm he was in haste, and he wished to go first to Imladris; for he had left his wife and youngest son there, 3 and he had moreover an urgent need for the counsel of Elrond. He therefore determined to make his way north from Osgiliath up the Vales of Anduin to Cirith Forn en Andrath, the high-climbing pass of the North, that led down to Imladris. 4 He knew the land well, for he had journeyed there often before the War of the Alliance, and had marched that way to the war with men of eastern Arnor in the company of Elrond. 5

It was a long journey, but the only other way, west and then north to the road-meeting in Arnor, and then east to Imladris, was far longer. 6 As swift, maybe, for mounted men, but he had no horses fit for riding; 7 safer, maybe, in former days, but Sauron was vanquished, and the people of the Vales had been his allies in victory. He had no fear, save for weather and weariness, but these men must endure whom need sends far abroad in Middle-earth. 8

So it was, as is told in the legends of later days, that the second year of the Third Age was waning when Isildur set forth from Osgiliath early in Ivanneth, 9 expecting to reach Imladris in forty days, by mid-Narbeleth, ere winter drew nigh in the North. At the Eastgate of the Bridge on a bright morning Meneldil 10 bade him farewell. ‘Go now with good speed, and may the Sun of your setting out not cease to shine on your road!’

With Isildur went his three sons, Elendur, Aratan, and Ciryon, 11 and his Guard of two hundred knights and soldiers, stern men of Arnor and war-hardened. Of their journey