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By Root 1691 0

peril, have led out an expedition of ten thousand Riders (The Return of the King V 3) was no doubt justified. The Rohirrim had increased since the days of Folcwine, and before the attacks of Saruman a Full Muster would probably have produced many more than twelve thousand Riders, so that Rohan would not have been denuded entirely of trained defenders. In the event, owing to losses in the western war, the hastiness of the Muster, and the threat from North and East, Théoden only led out a host of some six thousand spears, though this was still the greatest riding of the Rohirrim that was recorded since the coming of Eorl.’

The full muster of the cavalry was called éoherë (see note 49). These words, and alsoÉothéod, are of course Anglo-Saxon in form, since the true language of Rohan is everywhere thus translated (see note 6 above): they contain as their first element eoh ‘horse’.Éored, éorod is a recorded Anglo-Saxon word, its second element derived from rád ‘riding’ in éoherë the second element is herë ‘host, army’. Éothéod has théod ‘people’ or ‘land’, and is used both of the Riders themselves and of their country. (Anglo-Saxon eorl in the name Eorl the Young is a wholly unrelated word.)

37 This was always said in the days of the Stewards, in any solemn pronouncement, though by the time of Cirion (the twelfth Ruling Steward) it had become a formula that few believed would ever come to pass. [Author’s note.]

38 alfirin: the simbelmynë of the Kings’ mounds below Edoras, and the uilos that Tuor saw in the great ravine of Gondolin in the Elder Days; see p. 73, note 27. Alfirin is named, but apparently of a different flower, in a verse that Legolas sang in Minas Tirith (The Return of the King V 9): ‘The golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin / In the green fields of Lebennin.’

39 The Lord of Dol Amroth had this title. It was given to his ancestors by Elendil, with whom they had kinship. They were a family of the Faithful who had sailed from Númenor before the Downfall and had settled in the land of Belfalas, between the mouths of Ringló and Gilrain, with a stronghold upon the high promontory of Dol Amroth (named after the last King of Lórien). [Author’s note.] – Elsewhere it is said (p. 321) that according to the tradition of their house the first Lord of Dol Amroth was Galador (c. Third Age 2004– 2129), the son of Imrazôr the Númenórean, who dwelt in Belfalas, and the Elven-lady Mithrellas, one of the companions of Nimrodel. The note just cited seems to suggest that this family of the Faithful settled in Belfalas with a stronghold on Dol Amroth before the Downfall of Númenor; and if that is so, the two statements can only be reconciled on the supposition that the line of the Princes, and indeed the place of their dwelling, went back more than two thousand years before Galador’s day, and that Galador was called the first Lord of Dol Amroth because it was not until his time (after the drowning of Amroth in the year 1981) that Dol Amroth was so named. A further difficulty is the presence of an Adrahil of Dol Amroth (clearly an ancestor of Adrahil the father of Imrahil, Lord of Dol Amroth at the time of the War of the Ring) as a commander of the forces of Gondor in the battle against the Wainriders in the year 1944 (pp. 379 – 81); but it may be supposed that this earlier Adrahil was not called ‘of Dol Amroth’ at that time.

While not impossible, these explanations to save consistency seem to me to be less likely than that of two distinct and independent ‘traditions’ of the origins of the Lords of Dol Amroth.

40 The letters were (L · ND · L): Elendil’s name without vowel-marks, which he used as a badge, and a device upon his seals. [Author’s note.]

41 Amon Anwar was in fact the high place nearest to the centre of a line from the inflow of the Limlight down to the southern cape of Tol Falas; and the distance from it to the Fords of Isen was equal to its distance from Minas Tirith. [Author’s note.]

42 Though imperfectly; for it was in ancient terms and made in the forms of verse and high speech that were used by the