Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [174]
26 It is said that in later days those (such as Elrond) whose memories recalled him were struck by the great likeness to him, in body and mind, of King Elessar, the victor in the War of the Ring, in which both the Ring and Sauron were ended for ever. Elessar was according to the records of the Dúnedain the descendant in the thirty-eighth degree of Elendur’s brother Valandil. So long was it before he was avenged. [Author’s note.]
27 Seven leagues or more from the place of battle. Night had fallen when he fled; he reached Anduin at midnight or near it. [Author’s note.]
28 This was of a kind called eket: a short stabbing sword with a broad blade, pointed and two-edged, from a foot to one and a half feet long. [Author’s note.]
29 The place of the last stand had been a mile or more beyond their northern border, but maybe in the dark the fall of the land had bent his course somewhat to the south. [Author’s note.]
30 A flask of miruvor, ‘the cordial of Imladris’, was given to Gandalf by Elrond when the company set out from Riven-dell (The Fellowship of the Ring II 3); see also The Road Goes Ever On, p. 61.
31 For that metal was found in Númenor. [Author’s note.] – In ‘The Line of Elros’ (p. 286) Tar-Telemmaitë, the fifteenth Ruler of Númenor, is said to have been called so(i.e. ‘silver-handed’) because of his love of silver, ‘and he bade his servants to seek ever for mithril’ . But Gandalf said that mithril was found in Moria ‘alone in the world’ (The Fellowship of the Ring II 4).
32 It is told in ‘Aldarion and Erendis’ (p. 238) that Erendis caused the diamond which Aldarion brought to her from Middle-earth ‘to be set as a star in a silver fillet; and at her asking he bound it on her forehead’. For this reason she was known as Tar-Elestirnë, the Lady of the Star-brow; ‘and thus came, it is said, the manner of the Kings and Queens afterward to wear as a star a white jewel upon the brow, and they had no crown’ (p. 277, note 18). This tradition cannot be unconnected with that of the Elendilmir, a star-like gem borne on the brow as a token of royalty in Arnor; but the original Elendilmir itself, since it belonged to Silmarien, was in existence in Númenor (whatever its origin may have been) before Aldarion brought Erendis’ jewel from Middle-earth, and they cannot be the same.
33 The actual number was thirty-eight, since the second Elendilmir was made for Valandil (cf. note 26 above). – In the Tale of Years in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings the entry for the year 16 of the Fourth Age (given under Shire Reckoning 1436) states that when King Elessar came to the Brandywine Bridge to greet his friends he gave the Star of the Dúnedain to Master Samwise, while his daughter Elanor was made a maid of honour to Queen Arwen. On the basis of this record Mr Robert Foster says in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth that ‘the Star [of Elendil] was worn on the brow of the Kings of the North-kingdom until Elessar gave it to Sam Gamgee in Fourth Age 16’. The clear implication of the present passage is that King Elessar retained indefinitely the Elendilmir that was made for Valandil; and it seems to me in any case out of the question that he would have made a gift of it to the Mayor of the Shire, however greatly he esteemed him. The Elendilmir is called by several names: the Star of Elendil, the Star of the North, the Star of the North-kingdom; and the Star of the Dúnedain (occurring only in this entry in the Tale of Years) is assumed to be yet another both in Robert Foster’s Guide and in J.E.A. Tyler’s Tolkien Companion. I have found no other reference to it; but it seems to me to be almost certain that it was not, and that Master Samwise received some different (and more suitable) distinction.
APPENDIX
NÚMENÓREAN LINEAR MEASURES
A note associated with the passage in ‘The Disaster of the Gladden Fields’ concerning the different routes from Osgiliath to Imladris (pp. 351 and 360, note