Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [237]
12 ‘At each turn of the road there were great standing stones that had been carved in the likeness of men, huge and clumsy-limbed, squatting cross-legged with their stumpy arms folded on fat bellies. Some in the wearing of the years had lost all features save the dark holes of their eyes that still stared sadly at the passer-by.’
13 The name Drúwaith Iaur (Old Púkel-land) appears on Miss Pauline Baynes’ decorated map of Middle-earth (see p. 339), placed well to the north of the mountains of the promontory of Andrast. My father stated however that the name was inserted by him and was correctly placed. – A marginal jotting states that after the Battles of the Fords of Isen it was found that many Drúedain did indeed survive in the Drúwaith Iaur, for they came forth from the caves where they dwelt to attack remnants of Saruman’s forces that had been driven away southwards. – In a passage cited on p. 479 there is a reference to tribes of ‘Wild Men’, fishers and fowlers, on the coasts of Enedwaith, who were akin in race and speech to the Drúedain of Anórien.
14 Once in The Lord of the Rings the term ‘Woses’ is used, when Elfhelm said to Meriadoc Brandybuck: ‘You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods.’ Wose is a modernization (in this case, the form that the word would have had now if it still existed in the language) of an Anglo-Saxon word wása, which is actually found only in the compound wudu-wása ‘wild man of the woods’. (Saeros the Elf of Doriath called Túrin a ‘woodwose’, p. 105 above. The word survived long in English and was eventually corrupted into ‘wood-house’.) The actual word employed by the Rohirrim (of which ‘wose’ is a translation, according to the method employed throughout) is once mentioned: róg, plural rógin.
It seems that the term ‘Púkel-men’ (again a translation: it represents Anglo-Saxon púcel ‘goblin, demon’, a relative of the word púca from which Puck is derived) was only used in Rohan of the images of Dunharrow.
II
THE ISTARI
The fullest account of the Istari was written, as it appears, in 1954 (see the Introduction, pp. 17 – 18, for an account of its origin). I give it here in full, and will refer to it subsequently as ‘the essay on the Istari’.
Wizard is a translation of Quenya istar (Sindarin ithron): one of the members of an ‘order’ (as they called it), claiming to possess, and exhibiting, eminent knowledge of the history and nature of the World. The translation (though suitable in its relation to ‘wise’ and other ancient words of knowing, similar to that of istar in Quenya) is not perhaps happy, since the Heren Istarion or ‘Order of Wizards’ was quite distinct from the ‘wizards’ and ‘magicians’ of later legend; they belonged solely to the Third Age and then departed, and none save maybe Elrond, Círdan, and Galadriel discovered of what kind they were or whence they came.
Among Men they were supposed (at first) by those that had dealings with them to be Men who had acquired lore and arts by long and secret study. They first appeared in Middle-earth about the year 1000 of the Third Age, but for long they went about in simple guise, as it were of Men already old in years but hale in body, travellers and wanderers, gaining knowledge of Middle-earth and all that dwelt therein, but revealing to none their powers and purposes. In that time Men saw them seldom and heeded them little. But as the shadow of Sauron began to grow and take shape again, they became more active, and sought ever to contest the growth of the Shadow, and to move Elves and Men to beware of their peril. Then far and wide rumour of their comings and goings, and their meddling in many matters, was noised among Men; and Men perceived that they did not die, but remained the same (unless it were that they aged somewhat in looks), while the fathers and sons of Men passed away. Men, therefore, grew to fear them, even when they loved them, and they were held to be of the Elven-race (with whom, indeed, they often consorted).
Yet