Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [172]
The Elvish names of the Mountains of Mirkwood are not found elsewhere. In Appendix F (II) to The Lord of the Rings the Elvish name of Mirkwood is Taur-e-Ndaedelos ‘forest of the great fear’ the name given here, Taur-nu-Fuin ‘forest under night’, was the later name of Dorthonion, the forested highland on the northern borders of Beleriand in the Elder Days. The application of the same name, Taurnu-Fuin, to both Mirkwood and Dorthonion is notable, in the light of the close relation of my father’s pictures of them: see Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979, note to no. 37. – After the end of the War of the Ring Thranduil and Celeborn renamed Mirkwood once more, calling it Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Greenleaves (Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings).
Men-i-Naugrim, the Dwarf Road, is the Old Forest Road described in The Hobbit, Chapter 7. In the earlier draft of this section of the present narrative there is a note referring to ‘the ancient Forest Road that led down from the Pass of Imladris and crossed Anduin by a bridge (that had been enlarged and strengthened for the passage of the armies of the Alliance), and so over the eastern valley into the Greenwood. The Anduin could not be bridged at any lower point; for a few miles below the Forest Road the land fell steeply and the river became very swift, until it reached the great basin of the Gladden Fields. Beyond the Fields it quickened again, and was then a great flood fed by many streams, of which the names are forgotten save those of the larger: the Gladden (Sîr Ninglor), Silverlode (Celebrant), and Limlight (Limlaith).’ In The Hobbit the Forest Road traversed the great river by the Old Ford, and there is no mention of there having once been a bridge at the crossing.
15 A different tradition of the event is represented in the brief account given in Of the Rings of Power (The Silmarillion p. 295): ‘Isildur was overwhelmed by a host of Orcs that lay in wait in the Misty Mountains; and they descended upon him at unawares in his camp between the Greenwood and the Great River, nigh to Loeg Ningloron, the Gladden Fields, for he was heedless and set no guard, deeming that all his foes were overthrown.’
16 Thangail ‘shield-fence’ was the name of this formation in Sindarin, the normal spoken language of Elendil’s people; its ‘official’ name in Quenya was sandastan ‘shield-barrier’, derived from primitive thandā ‘shield’ and stama- ‘bar, exclude’. The Sindarin word used a different second element: cail, a fence or palisade of spikes and sharp stakes. This, in primitive form keglē, was derived from a stem keg- ‘snag, barb’, seen also in the primitive word kegyā ‘hedge’, whence Sindarin cai (cf. the Morgai in Mordor).
The dírnaith, Quenya nernehta ‘man-spearhead’, was a wedge-formation, launched over a short distance against an enemy massing but not yet arrayed, or against a defensive formation on open ground. Quenya nehte, Sindarin naith was applied to any formation or projection tapering to a point: a spearhead, gore, wedge, narrow promontory (root nek ‘narrow’); cf. the Naith of Lórien, the land at the angle of the Celebrant and Anduin, which at the actual junction of the rivers was narrower and more pointed than can be shown on a small-scale map. [Author’s note.]
17 Ohtar is the only name used in the legends; but it is probably only the title of address that Isildur used at this tragic moment, hiding his feelings under formality. Ohtar ‘warrior, soldier’ was the title of all who, though fully trained and experienced, had not yet been admitted