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isolated note associated with the text remarks that at this period the Morannon was still in the control of Gondor, and the two Watch-towers east and west of it (the Towers of the Teeth) were still manned. The road through Ithilien was still in full repair as far as the Morannon; and there it met a road going north towards the Dagorlad, and another going east along the line of Ered Lithui. [Neither of these roads is marked on the maps to The Lord of the Rings. ] The eastward road extended to a point north of the site of Barad-dûr; it had never been completed further, and what had been made was now long neglected. Nonetheless its first fifty miles, which had once been fully constructed, greatly speeded the Wainriders’ approach.

16 Historians surmised that it was the same hill as that upon which King Elessar made his stand in the last battle against Sauron with which the Third Age ended. But if so it was still only a natural upswelling that offered little obstacle to horsemen and had not yet been piled up by the labour of Orcs. [Author’s note.] – The passages in The Return of the King (V 10) here referred to tell that ‘Aragorn now set the host in such array as could best be contrived; and they were drawn up on two great hills of blasted stone and earth that orcs had piled in years of labour,’ and that Aragorn with Gandalf stood on the one while the banners of Rohan and Dol Amroth were raised on the other.

17 On the presence of Adrahil of Dol Amroth see note 39.

18 Their former home: in the Vales of Anduin between the Carrock and the Gladden Fields, see p. 375.

19 The cause of the northward migration of the Éothéod is given in Appendix A (II) to The Lord of the Rings: ‘[The forefathers of Eorl] loved best the plains, and delighted in horses and all feats of horsemanship, but there were many men in the middle vales of Anduin in those days, and moreover the shadow of Dol Guldur was lengthening; when therefore they heard of the overthrow of the Witch-king [in the year 1975], they sought more room in the North, and drove away the remnants of the people of Angmar on the east side of the Mountains. But in the days of Léod, father of Eorl, they had grown to be a numerous people and were again somewhat straitened in the land of their home.’ The leader of the migration of the Éothéod was named Frumgar; and in the Tale of Years its date is given as 1977.

20 These rivers, unnamed, are marked on the map to The Lord of the Rings. The Greylin is there shown as having two tributary branches.

21 The Watchful Peace lasted from the years 2063 to 2460, when Sauron was absent from Dol Guldur.

22 For the forts along the Anduin see p. 378, and for the Undeeps p. 337.

23 From an earlier passage in this text (p. 376) one gains the impression that there were no Northmen left in the lands east of Mirkwood after the victory of Calimehtar over the Wainriders on the Dagorlad in the year 1899.

24 So these people were then called in Gondor: a mixed word of popular speech, from Westron balc ‘horrible’ and Sindarin hoth ‘horde’, applied to such peoples as the Orcs. [Author’s note.] – See the entry hoth in the Appendix to The Silmarillion.

25 The letters R· ND ·R surmounted by three stars, signifying arandur (king’s servant), steward. [Author’s note.]

26 He did not speak of the thought that he had also in mind: that the Éothéod were, as he had learned, restless, finding their northern lands too narrow and infertile to support their numbers, which had much increased. [Author’s note.]

27 His name was long remembered in the song of Rochon Methestel (Rider of the Last Hope) as Borondir Udalraph (Borondir the Stirrupless), for he rode back with the éoherë at the right hand of Eorl, and was the first to cross the Limlight and cleave a path to the aid of Cirion. He fell at last on the Field of Celebrant defending his lord, to the great grief of Gondor and the Éothéod, and was afterwards laid in tomb in the Hallows of Minas Tirith. [Author’s note.]

28 Eorl’s horse. In Appendix A (II) to The Lord of the Rings it is told that Eorl’s father Léod, who was