Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [234]
Only once, in an isolated note, is anything said explicitly concerning the relationship between the Drúedain of Beleriand in the First Age, who guarded the houses of the Folk of Haleth in the Forest of Brethil, and the remote ancestors of Ghân-buri-Ghân, who guided the Rohirrim down the Stonewain Valley on their way to Minas Tirith (The Return of the King V 5), or the makers of the images on the road to Dunharrow (ibid. V 3). 12 This note states:
An emigrant branch of the Drúedain accompanied the Folk of Haleth at the end of the First Age, and dwelt in the Forest [of Brethil] with them. But most of them had remained in the White Mountains, in spite of their persecution by later-arrived Men, who had relapsed into the service of the Dark.
It is also said here that the identity of the statues of Dunharrow with the remnants of the Drúath (perceived by Meriadoc Brandybuck when he first set eyes on Ghânburi-Ghân) was originally recognized in Gondor, though at the time of the establishment of the Númenórean kingdom by Isildur they survived only in the Drúadan Forest and in the Drúwaith Iaur (see below).
We can thus if we wish elaborate the ancient legend of the coming of the Edain in The Silmarillion (pp. 140 – 3) by the addition of the Drúedain, descending out of Ered Lindon into Ossiriand with the Haladin (the Folk of Haleth). Another note says that historians in Gondor believed that the first Men to cross the Anduin were indeed the Drúedain. They came (it was believed) from lands south of Mordor, but before they reached the coasts of Haradwaith they turned north into Ithilien, and eventually finding a way across the Anduin (probably near Cair Andros) settled in the vales of the White Mountains and the wooded lands at their northern feet. ‘They were a secretive people, suspicious of other kinds of Men by whom they had been harried and persecuted as long as they could remember, and they had wandered west seeking a land where they could be hidden and have peace.’ But nothing more is said, here or elsewhere, concerning the history of their association with the Folk of Haleth.
In an essay, cited previously, on the names of rivers in Middle-earth there is a glimpse of the Drúedain in the Second Age. It is said here (see p. 341) that the native people of Enedwaith, fleeing from the devastations of the Númenóreans along the course of the Gwathló,
did not cross the Isen nor take refuge in the great promontory between Isen and Lefnui that formed the north arm of the Bay of Belfalas, because of the ‘Púkel-men’, who were a secret and fell people, tireless and silent hunters, using poisoned darts. They said that they had always been there, and had formerly lived also in the White Mountains. In ages past they had paid no heed to the Great Dark One (Morgoth), nor did they later ally themselves with Sauron; for they hated all invaders from the East. From the East, they said, had come the tall Men who drove them from the White Mountains, and they were wicked at heart. Maybe even in the days of the War of the Ring some of the Drû-folk lingered in the mountains of Andrast, the western outlier of the White Mountains, but only the remnant in the woods of Anórien were known to the people of Gondor.
This region between Isen and Lefnui was the Drúwaith Iaur, and in yet another scrap of writing on this subject it is stated that the word Iaur ‘old’ in this name does not mean ‘original’ but ‘former’:
The ‘Púkel-men’ occupied the White Mountains (on both sides) in