Tony Meade
Active Member
SESSION 335
Ill tidings in a fair hand:
Ill tidings in a fair hand:
- Unlike other modes, the one that Ori is writing uses full letters for the vowels rather than marks.
- It’s possible that Ori uses the Tengwar because he intends for it to be read by others outside of Moria, as opposed to the earlier sections of the book which seem to be exclusively for Dwarves.
- This may be because by the time he is writing this, it is clear that this may have to be a record for others to read after the Dwarves are all dead, in order to pass on what happened to them.
- There is another writing mistake, misspelling “dale” as “bale”, and may be an unintentional one.
- This may be evidence that although Ori is skilled in writing Tengwar, it is not in his first language.
- It seems to be a convention to use the symbol for the number one for indefinite articles “a/an”.
- Note: This is common in real-world manuscripts, in which the scribe uses known abbreviations.
- The word that Gandalf seems to leave out is “came”, followed by “up from east up the Silverlode”, which refers to many more orcs arriving after they slew the one that killed Balin.
- It’s unclear if Ori intended to capitalize “east”, which would have implications as to the meaning.
- Some choices between phonetic and orthographic spellings may come down to native language.
- It’s possible that Gandalf may choose not to read out the less clear portions of the text, not because he couldn’t read them at all, but because he wanted to spare the Company some parts.
- What Gandalf leaves out is “we rescued Balin’s body after a sharp battle (in the dark)”, which makes sense if Balin had wanted to look in the Mirrormere at night to see the stars within it.
- This also parallels the earlier entry that described a sharp battle in the daytime at the front gate.
- Therefore, it is a symbolic way to mark the start of the Dwarves’ conquest, fighting their way in during the day, and then losing Moria to the Orcs by having to defend the gate during the night.
- Note: The original drafts of the manuscript pages do not include these lines, but only those that are actually described in the text, meaning that Tolkien added these lines in the final revision.
- These lines describing the battle in which they recovered Balin’s body explain the tomb building.
- Having “we have barred the gates” follow means that they lost this battle and had to dig in later.
- The line that follows is “but doubt if we” before the “can hold them long”, though it is written phonetically, not orthographically, and then starts a new sentence with “if there is no escape”.
- This is followed by “it will be a horrible fate to” which ends with “suffer”, which Gandalf reads.
- It’s clear that they foresaw their defeat at this point and did not expect survival against the Orcs.
- The passage ends with “but I shall hold”, which demonstrates their determination to fight.
- This page is marked as the fifth year, and the next as the sixth, which means that the Dwarves were aware for some time that the end was coming and had to hold out there for quite a while.
- The passage of time also accounts for the building of Balin’s tomb, which would be a large work.
- It’s possible that months have passed, during which Óin’s expedition to Westgate took place.
- This passage makes it clear that the Orcs are invading from outside, probably from Dol Guldur.