Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [190]
Nonetheless, the Stewards, partly from awe, and partly from the cares of the kingdom, went very seldom to the hallow on the Hill of Anwar, except when they took their heir to the hill-top, according to the custom of the Kings. Sometimes it remained for several years unvisited, and as Isildur had prayed it was in the keeping of the Valar; for though the woods might grow tangled and be avoided by men because of the silence, so that the upward path was lost, still when the way was re-opened the hallow was found unweathered and unprofaned, ever-green and at peace under the sky, until the Kingdom of Gondor was changed.
For it came to pass that Cirion, the twelfth of the Ruling Stewards, was faced by a new and great danger: invaders threatened the conquest of all the lands of Gondor north of the White Mountains, and if that were to happen the downfall and destruction of the whole kingdom must soon follow. As is known in the histories, this peril was averted only by the aid of the Rohirrim; and to them Cirion with great wisdom granted all the northern lands, save Anórien, to be under their own rule and king, though in perpetual alliance with Gondor. There were no longer sufficient men in the realm to people the northward region, nor even to maintain in force the line of forts along the Anduin that had guarded its eastward boundary. Cirion gave long thought to this matter before he granted Calenardhon to the Horsemen of the North; and he judged that its cession must change wholly the ‘Tradition of Isildur’ with regard to the hallow of Amon Anwar. To that place he brought the Lord of the Rohirrim, and there by the mound of Elendil he with the greatest solemnity took the Oath of Eorl, and was answered by the Oath of Cirion, confirming for ever the alliance of the Kingdoms of the Rohirrim and of Gondor. But when this was done, and Eorl had returned to the North to bring back all his people to their new dwelling, Cirion removed the tomb of Elendil. For he judged that the ‘Tradition of Isildur’ was now made void. The hallow was no longer ‘at the mid-point of the Kingdom of the South’, but on the borders of another realm; and moreover the words ‘while the Kingdom endures’ referred to the Kingdom as it was when Isildur spoke, after surveying its bounds and defining them. It was true that other parts of the Kingdom had been lost since that day: Minas Ithil was in the hands of the Nazgûl, and Ithilien was desolate; but Gondor had not relinguished its claim to them. Calenardhon it had resigned for ever under oath. The casket therefore that Isildur had set within the mound Cirion removed to the Hallows of Minas Tirith; but the green mound remained as the memorial of a memorial. Nonetheless, even when it had become the site of a great beacon, the Hill of Anwar was still a place of reverence to Gondor and to the Rohirrim, who named it in their own tongue Halifirien, the Holy Mount.
NOTES
1 No writing is extant with this title, but no doubt the narrative given in the third section (‘Cirion and Eorl’, p. 388) represents a part of it.
2 Such as the Book of the Kings. [Author’s note.] – This work was referred to in the opening passage of Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings, as being (with The Book of the Stewards and the Akallabêth) among the records of Gondor that were opened to Frodo and Peregrin by King Elessar; but in the revised edition the reference was removed.
3 The East Bight, not named elsewhere, was the great indentation in the eastern border of Mirkwood seen in the map to The Lord of the Rings.
4 The Northmen appear to have been most nearly akin to the third and greatest of the peoples of the Elf-friends, ruled by the House of Hador. [Author’s note.]
5 The escape of the army of Gondor from total destruction was in part due to the courage and loyalty of the horsemen of the Northmen under Marhari (a descendant of Vidugavia ‘King of Rhovanion’) who acted as rearguard. But the forces of Gondor