371 – When Dwarves Cry

Summary

The Prancing Pony Podcast

Episode: 371 – When Dwarves Cry
Release Date: May 11, 2025
Hosts: Alan Sisto & Sara Gavin
Description:
In Episode 371 of The Prancing Pony Podcast, Alan Sisto takes the lead in an in-depth exploration of the Dwarves within J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium. Joined by co-host Sara Gavin, they delve into the origins, culture, language, and intricate societal structures of the Dwarven race, drawing from various texts including The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, and The History of Middle-earth. The episode also incorporates historical insights into Tolkien’s life and works, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding the Dwarves.

---

Key Topics Covered

1. This Week in Tolkien History

The episode begins with a segment on significant occurrences in Tolkien’s history that coincide with the release date, May 11th, across different years.

• May 11, 1922:

  • Publication: Tolkien's first book, A Middle English Vocabulary, was published by Clarendon Press.
  • Quote:
    Alan Sisto [02:07]: "Sometimes the delay works out."

• May 11, 1944:

  • Letter to Christopher Tolkien:
    • Tolkien discusses progress on The Lord of the Rings, mentioning chapter developments and expressing optimism about the story's direction.
  • Quote:
    Sara Gavin [06:15]: "Fairly swiftly. I love his optimism here."

• May 11, 1980:

  • First Airing: The animated TV film The Return of the King by Rankin and Bass premiered.
  • Quote:
    Alan Sisto [08:26]: "The Return of the King was just. Everything came up out of nowhere."

• May 11, 1957:

  • Financial Milestone: Tolkien received a substantial payment from Allen and Unwin for The Lord of the Rings.
  • Quote:
    Alan Sisto [11:01]: "But if he'd known this check was coming, he might have considered retiring earlier."

• May 10, 1981:

  • BBC Radio Adaptation: Episode 10 of the BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings aired.
  • Quote:
    Sara Gavin [14:35]: "I actually didn't see it at launch either because I'd seen a preview."

• May 16, 2007:

  • Publication: The Deluxe Edition of The Children of Húrin was released, becoming a prized possession among fans.
  • Quote:
    Alan Sisto [17:45]: "That's the Super Deluxe. But, yeah, that's the one that's full leather bound."

2. Deep Dive: The Dwarves

a. Origins of the Dwarves

Alan Sisto opens the discussion by referencing The War of the Jewels, highlighting the mysterious creation of the Dwarves by Aulë before the arrival of the Children of Ilúvatar.

• Creation by Aulë:

  • Alan Sisto [20:55]: "The Naugrim are not of elf kind, nor of mankind, nor yet of Melkor's breeding. They were created by Aulë with a desire to teach his crafts and lore to the children of Ilúvatar."

• Seven Fathers:

  • The Dwarven race was founded by seven fathers, with Durin being the most renowned.
  • Sara Gavin [24:14]: "How Durin maintains his line without a mate is a major conundrum Tolkien didn't fully resolve."

b. Cultural Practices and Society

Sara Gavin elaborates on the Dwarven society, emphasizing their craftsmanship, secretive nature, and demographic challenges.

• Craftsmanship:

  • Dwarves excelled in metalwork and stonecraft, initially focusing on functional items before gaining artistic skills through interactions with the Noldor.
  • Sara Gavin [43:29]: "Their passion for stone and metals is a defining feature, reflecting their deep connection to the Earth."

• Language and Secrecy:

  • The Dwarven language, Khuzdul, is complex and deliberately kept secret, with limited exposure to other races.
  • Sara Gavin [61:18]: "Their language is a core element of their identity, guarded fiercely and rarely shared."

• Demographic Challenges:

  • The scarcity of Dwarf women and low marriage rates pose significant threats to their population growth.
  • Sara Gavin [54:48]: "The low marriage rates add a touch of melancholy to the future of their race."

c. Language and Communication

The hosts discuss the role of language in Dwarven culture, highlighting their use of common speech for practicality while maintaining their secret tongue.

• Use of Common Speech:

  • Dwarves adopt the local languages for trade and interaction but resist teaching Khuzdul to outsiders.
  • Alan Sisto [66:15]: "They use common speech in dealings with others but keep their own language in secret."

• Cultural Preservation vs. Adaptation:

  • While Dwarves are adept at preserving their cultural identity, their scattered living conditions necessitate some adaptability.
  • Sara Gavin [89:14]: "Their proficiency in common speech reflects their pragmatic approach to survival and commerce."

d. Legacy and Ancestral Lines

The episode explores the significance of Durin and the continuous lineage of the Dwarven kings, touching upon the theological aspects of their creation and rebirth.

• Durin’s Lineage:

  • Durin the Deathless is a pivotal figure whose line never failed, raising questions about how his lineage continued without a mate.
  • Sara Gavin [74:02]: "Durin’s uninterrupted line suggests a form of reincarnation or preservation of his spirit."

• Theological Implications:

  • The creation and rebirth of Dwarven fathers by Aulë presents a unique theological perspective within Tolkien’s world.
  • Alan Sisto [91:20]: "The idea of Durin’s spirit returning to preserve his lineage adds a layer of immortality unique to the Dwarves."

3. Listener Question: The Decline in Dwarven Metalcraft

A listener named Yvette from New York poses a question regarding Gimli’s statement about the decline in Dwarven metalwork compared to their advancements in mining and building.

• Question:
  Yvette [119:06]: "Why can't the Dwarves make mail or blades as well as they used to? Why have they improved in mining and building but not in metalcraft?"

• Hosts’ Response:

  • The decline is attributed to the loss of master craftsmen during catastrophic events like Smaug’s attack, leading to the loss of essential knowledge and skills.
  • Alan Sisto [123:26]: "The secrets are lost because the masters and apprentices were destroyed, making it difficult to reproduce their finest crafts."

4. Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

The hosts wrap up the episode by acknowledging their Patreon supporters, promoting their online platforms, and teasing the next episode's focus on The Unfinished Tales and the Quest of Erebor.

• Next Episode:
  Sara Gavin [127:58]: "Join us next week as we delve into The Unfinished Tales and explore the Quest of Erebor in two dedicated episodes."

---

Notable Quotes

• On Dwarf Creation:
  Alan Sisto [20:55]: "They are not evil. For they were not made out of malice in mockery of the children but came of the desire of Aule's heart to make things of his own after the pattern of the designs of Ilúvatar."

• On Secretive Nature:
  Sara Gavin [61:18]: "Their language is a core element of their identity, guarded fiercely and rarely shared."

• On Demographic Issues:
  Sara Gavin [54:48]: "The low marriage rates add a touch of melancholy to the future of their race."

• On Cultural Preservation:
  Alan Sisto [66:15]: "They use common speech in dealings with others but keep their own language in secret."

• On Dwarven Lineage:
  Alan Sisto [91:20]: "The idea of Durin’s spirit returning to preserve his lineage adds a layer of immortality unique to the Dwarves."

---

Key Takeaways

• Complex Origins: The Dwarves were created by Aulë with a unique theological background, separate from Elves and Men.
• Cultural Richness: Their craftsmanship, secretive language, and societal structures add depth to their portrayal in Middle-earth.
• Demographic Challenges: Low marriage rates and scarce Dwarf women present significant threats to their population sustainability.
• Linguistic Preservation: Dwarves prioritize preserving their language and culture despite necessary interactions with other races.
• Evolving Depictions: Tolkien’s notes reveal a shift from early portrayals of Dwarves as more antagonistic to their later depiction as loyal and industrious allies.

---

Whether you're a dedicated Tolkien enthusiast or a newcomer to Middle-earth, Episode 371 of The Prancing Pony Podcast offers a thorough and engaging exploration of the Dwarven race, enhancing your understanding of their pivotal role in the rich tapestry of Tolkien’s legendarium.

Transcript

[Alan Sisto]

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[Sara Gavin]

Pick it up in time?

[Alan Sisto]

They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning. Done with the dramatics. Car selling in record time. Save your time. Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today.

[Sara Gavin]

Pickup fees may apply.

[Alan Sisto]

Good evening, little masters, and welcome to episode 371 of the Prancing Pony podcast. Where? Where? Well, we try our best to count how many wives the fathers of the dwarves actually had, and it turns out.

[Sara Gavin]

It was one less than they actually needed, apparently.

[Alan Sisto]

That's odd, considering there's not like 700 of them. There's just seven of them.

[Sara Gavin]

Yep, yep. But we'll have to dig in and find out why that is. So, folks, pull up a bench in the common room and join us. I'm Sara, the shield maiden of Rohan, and I'm here with the man of The West. Currently working on becoming a paid up member of the Longbeards and Alan Sisto, the Long Beards.

[Alan Sisto]

I got. I got a long way to go before I'm actually able to even qualify to be an apprentice there, folks.

[Sara Gavin]

Baby steps, baby steps.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Well, folks, join us as we continue our look at the dwarves via a deep dive into the history of Middle Earth.

[Sara Gavin]

Deep, deep, deep, deep. So deep. If we come up too fast, we're going to get the bends. That's how deep we're going.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, this is going to be good stuff. As long as we don't wake up a Balrog.

[Sara Gavin]

Now folks, no matter how you arrived, you're all welcome. Here in the common room at the Prancing Pony Podcast, we are reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and many bad jokes along the way.

[Alan Sisto]

At least we try. We do love our deep dives into the lore, discussing our favorite themes and a whole lot more.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, but we try and keep it light and fun, like a couple of friends chatting at the pub. And we're glad you've joined us, and.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm sure you'll be glad you joined as well. But before we get to tonight's chapter discussion, it's time to see what happened this week in Tolkien history. Well, and folks, as usual, we're going to take a look at a range of dates from a day or two before this date, which is May 11, up until about a week after. So we get a kind of an idea of all the things that have been happening in this week today. We're going to start with events that happened though, on this date precisely May 11, starting all the way back in 1922, 103 years ago, when, at the seasoned age of 30 years old, Tolkien's very first book was published. A Middle English vocabulary. A 168 page paperback glossary of Middle English words was published by the Clarendon Press in Oxford. Interestingly, it was originally supposed to be published together with Kenneth Seism, 14th century verse and prose in 1921, but Tolkien hadn't finished it yet. Shocker, I'm sure you're all I know. So it ended up getting published separately. If he'd been on time, it simply would have been the glossary at the end of Sizem's book. So sometimes the delay works out.

[Sara Gavin]

Of course, it was delayed because it was a bigger project than he'd originally expected. He was given time off from his regular work at the OED and even kept working on it after he moved to Leeds University in 1920. He mentions the work in letter number six, written in 1923 to a Mrs. E. M. Wright, the wife of Joseph Wright, under whom Tolkien had studied philology at Oxford. And he said, I am very grateful to you for your kind remarks about the glossary. I certainly lavished an amount of time on it, which is terrible to recall, and long delayed the reader bringing curses on my head, but it was instructive.

[Alan Sisto]

I've long delayed the listener bringing curses on my head. I like that. That's good. Fast forward 22 years to this day, again, May 11th in 1944, as Tolkien pens letter number 67 to his son Christopher, who was then serving in the Royal Air Force, training as a pilot in South Africa, he tells Christopher that he has completed my fourth new chapter, Faramir, which received fullest approbation from CSL and cw. That's a reference to Charles Williams. On Monday morning, he gives a very brief account of his week's events, acknowledging that only a little amount of time can be spared for Ring before giving his son a brief synopsis of the upcoming events in the story. Another chapter proceeding, leading to disaster at Cirith Ungol, where Frodo is captured. Story then switches back to Gondor and runs fairly swiftly, I hope, to denouement. I hope. He continues, Ithilien, you may remember its situation on the map you made is revealed as rather a lovely land. Fairly swiftly.

[Sara Gavin]

Fairly swiftly. I love his optimism here.

[Alan Sisto]

It's 1944.

[Sara Gavin]

You'd think he'd know himself by now, wouldn't you? Nothing he put his hand to went flying fairly swiftly.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. 22 years earlier he just published a book because it was supposed to be out the year before.

[Sara Gavin]

And it's not the only time he let Kenneth Seizem down a little bit.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true.

[Sara Gavin]

Which he was working on back in 1922 and which never got finished. It was never done.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I think.

[Sara Gavin]

Wasn't it in the 1950s, late 1950s, he finally handed over the proofs of what he had done to somebody else. Let them get on with it.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Like 30 years later.

[Alan Sisto]

30 years later. Well, it is Chaucer. I mean, it's. You know, how much is going to change in the corpus of Chaucer in 30 years, you know, in the 20th century. But yeah, it's. Tolkien does have a sense of optimism about how quickly he can finish things. And 1944 runs fairly swiftly, I hope, to denouement.

[Sara Gavin]

If fairly swiftly is snail's pace, then yes, another decade.

[Alan Sisto]

Easily.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, dear. In the world of Tolkien adaptations. This day, May 11th in 1980. I remember 1980. I just hate to think how long ago that was.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Anyway, this day in May 11, 1980, saw the first airing of the animated TV film the Return of the King. The Rankin and Bass production, which had begun production before Bakshi's the Lord of the Rings had released the year before, was essentially presented as a sequel to the Rankin and bass Hobbit from 1977.

[Alan Sisto]

Which is one of the reasons why it was awful. In my mind. I. I mean, I. There are moments from it that we all remember with fondness. I mean, who does not recall where there's a whip, there's a way. I mean, that may be one of the catchiest Lord of the Rings related tunes out there.

[Sara Gavin]

I'm just surprised that Howard Shaw rejected it.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, that would have been great. I would have loved that. Yeah. Frodo and Sam just kind of humming it under their breath.

[Sara Gavin]

Where There's a way. Yeah. The Rankin and Bass production is not my favorite.

[Alan Sisto]

No. And the Return of the King, you know, I mean, of the. Of the three. I mean, of the two Rankin and Bass projects, certainly Return of the King was far and away worse than the Hobbit. And the Hobbit had its own struggles. The Hobbit struggles were trying to condense the story into a 72 minute. Once you cut commercials, time frame, which was way too short. And. And then of course, they had other issues like the King of the Woodland Realm who sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know, I mean, I expected him to tell the dwarves to get to the chopper. The Return of the King was just. Everything came up out of nowhere. I remember, you know, like the Rohirrim show up and Eowyn kills the Witch King and you're like, who the heck is this person? You don't know anything about her at all. And basically she just suddenly is there.

[Sara Gavin]

Doing that and then gone.

[Alan Sisto]

And I don't remember whether it's Pippin or Mary that has to explain it sort of in a voiceover. But it's. It's Casey Kasem, so it's. It's more like Shaggy trying to explain it. Zoinks. Eowyn shows up and kills the Witch King. The standoff with the Witch King and Gandalf at the gates, it's. It's so. Have you. Do you remember that? The Witch King's got this voice that's like. And I'm going to try to do my best. Hinder me, thou fool.

[Sara Gavin]

No, Gollum.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And it's like this sort of. It's like Skeletor or something. It's just the weirdest ever. Oh, dear.

[Sara Gavin]

And you can tell it's been a while since I last saw it because you were just bringing back memories. I didn't say good memories.

[Alan Sisto]

No. I just said, no, there aren't very many. I mean, at least with the Hobbit, there are some good memories. You know, the Hobbit film had its moments. You know, a little bit of charm. This movie did not have its charm. And it was unfortunate. But that's wild. All of those things happen in May 11th. So we had May 11th all the way back in. In 1922, then May 11th in 1944, May 11th, 1980, which, I'm sorry to tell you, Sara, was 45 years ago.

[Sara Gavin]

Be quiet, rude.

[Alan Sisto]

So now we move off of this date, May 11, and to other dates in this week. And I'm going to look first to May 9th. This time in 1957, Tolkien had just received a very large check from Allen and Unwin for his earnings on the Lord of the Rings. Now, folks, remember that Tolkien had entered a rather interesting and unique agreement with the publisher. He would get no royalties at all until the publishing costs were recovered, costs which he thought might keep him from ever getting paid at all. But after that, he would receive half of the profits. Now, that's a brilliant deal in hindsight.

[Sara Gavin]

In retrospect, that was a superb deal.

[Alan Sisto]

So somebody at Allen and Unwin's like, why did we sign that? Why did we sign that? But of course, at the time, I mean, the production cost of Lord of the Rings was one of the big sticking points.

[Sara Gavin]

It was huge.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, very.

[Sara Gavin]

I don't think it would have been published at all if he said, yes, okay, we'll have this deal.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Exactly. So on May 9th, he wrote letter number 197 to Rainer Unwin. So this is essentially not quite today, but, you know, what are we talking about now? 67 years ago, a couple of days ago, he wrote this letter saying that if he'd known that this check was coming, he, quote, should have thought seriously of retiring at the proper time this July and refusing the extra two years. After all, he points out, they're not going to make enough of a difference to his retirement to bother. But he thought that he would need the income. Instead, he points out that his taxes mean, quote, he is merely going to be fined for going on working about the equivalent of my salary.

[Sara Gavin]

And not the first or last time that Tolkien complains about his taxes.

[Alan Sisto]

No, it's not anywhere near the first or last time. Keep in mind, folks, just for those of you who don't recall, the marginal tax rates were much, much higher in that time. I mean, I believe the. The highest marginal rate was 90%.

[Sara Gavin]

It was 90%. Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

As, as the Beatles song the Taxman tells us. Yes.

[Sara Gavin]

But bear in mind that 90% was only paid by those who had the equivalent of, you know, Jeff Bezos money back in the 1940s and 50s and.

[Alan Sisto]

60S, and only then on the very top amount. So, like, because it's a marginal tax rate, just like it's a marginal tax rate.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. Now, more than that, now that he's still working as a professor, he says it is practically impossible to get any connected time to spend on the silmarillion while I remain in office. I have had to lay it aside since last autumn, though I hope to resume it at the end of next month. Now, this was May of 1957.

[Alan Sisto]

Have we said anything about Tolkien's optimism before? I don't know.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I mean, I think, oh, I still have to carry on as a professor is an excellent excuse right now for not getting it done.

[Alan Sisto]

Part of me wonders, though, had he known this check was coming and then decided to retire in July of 57 instead of being a professor for two more years, would he have, I mean, like, isn't that an interesting. What if? Could he have finished the Silmarillion enough to publish it in, say, 61 or 62?

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, who knows? It's not like when he did retire two years later that he cracked on it, is it?

[Alan Sisto]

That is true. No, no, that's fair.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. So maybe, maybe not. Anyway, he then expresses thanks to Unwin, saying, you have been so kind and patient. Good word there. Patient to me. And without your encouragement and generous adventure, I expect the L of the Lord of the Rings would still be a heap of Ms. Manuscript, said she quickly.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes, said she quickly. Thank you for that clarification. Just a couple of more things this week in Tolkien history. May 10, 1981, episode 10 of the BBC radio adaptation of the Lord of the Rings aired. So not surprisingly, on May 17, episode 11 aired. Those two chapters, or those two airings covered the breaking of the Fellowship and the writers of Rohan. And this is just where I say, once again, the BBC radio adaptation is my selection as the gold standard of all adaptations.

[Sara Gavin]

It's a delight. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it is an absolute delight to listen to. Now, also on May 10th, but a little bit more recently, 2019 in fact, the biopic Tolkien was released in the.

[Alan Sisto]

U.S. i hard to believe that was six years ago though.

[Sara Gavin]

I know. But something very strange happened in the interim to time. Time went all wibbly wobbly timey wimey for a few years, didn't it?

[Alan Sisto]

That's what it does.

[Sara Gavin]

So.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean, part of me feels like that was just a, you know, a few months ago and then another part of me feels like it was a lifetime ago because of course Covid just changed everything.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, and like I said, that's. That's what caused the time to go all wibbly wobbly. I necessarily want to get on a full on sidebar about the film. I mean, we can talk about a little bit, but more about the time since we're talking about this week in Tolkien history. Did you go and see it that week?

[Sara Gavin]

I didn't see it that week, no. I think. What were we doing that week when it came out? There was something. I couldn't get to see it that week. I did see it before it disappeared out of cinemas though. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

I actually didn't see it at launch either because I'd seen a preview of it. I was invited to a special screening and sort of like give feedback thing.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, I forgot how important you are.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I think it was actually connected to the1ring.net actually do with me.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

And because we're in LA, right, I'm in Southern California and so that's one of the places where they wanted to do this sort of audience, you know, survey sort of thing. All I remember is I couldn't say anything about it. When I went. I had to put my phone in one of those little bags and put it in a locker. And I don't know that they made any changes. I don't recall because I didn't see it again until it came out on. On one of the streaming services. So it was probably another year before I watched it. But yeah, it was, it was enjoyable, if you recall it as a biopic and not as a documentary because it's not accurate in any.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, no, I mean historical. It really messed the timeline.

[Alan Sisto]

It really did. I. I mean, the fact that Tolkien was married before he went off to world, you know, that. That really was changed in the story. Same with the stuff about the tcbs. But it was enjoyable. Casting was nice.

[Sara Gavin]

But anyway, I thought the casting was nice and there was a really nice kind of buzz between the members of the tcbs, the actors playing them. I thought that actually came over Very well. And. And I don't remember who played Jeffrey Batch Smith. His name's gone out of my head.

[Alan Sisto]

I know.

[Sara Gavin]

But he was delightful and he played him so sympathetically with a very particular slant, of course.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, right. Yeah. That was Anthony Boyle, actually. I just looked that up real quick. I would not have remembered that, but I do remember his portrayal being something I really enjoyed.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. It touched on an element of their friendship that I thought was a very interesting way of reading it. And I was totally on board with it. I thought it worked very well.

[Alan Sisto]

It did. It worked really well. One last thing here in this Week in Tolkien history. May 16, 2007. I still can't believe that was almost 18 years ago. The Deluxe edition of the Children of Hurin was published. Now, the book itself had actually been published a month prior. April 16th. The Super Deluxe, that's the signed and limited edition, wasn't released until November. So we're just talking about the beautiful clothbound hardcover deluxe edition published 18 years ago this week.

[Sara Gavin]

Are you a possessor of the signed and limited edition?

[Alan Sisto]

I am, actually. That is my most prized book in my collection.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, I am.

[Alan Sisto]

Far and away. I didn't buy mine until probably 2012, 2013, so I'd already paid a pretty significant, you know, premium for it. But wow. I mean, it's to have Christopher Tolkien.

[Sara Gavin]

Signature on something and it's a very beautifully presented.

[Alan Sisto]

The book. Yeah, it's. That's the Super Deluxe. But, yeah, that's the one that's full leather bound. It comes in a gorgeous case that's velvet lined. I mean, it's just, this is the way every special book should be done. I mean, the Folio Society should take a look at this and be like, you know what? This is how we're going to do it.

[Sara Gavin]

This is how to do it. And, you know, it's not like we're not going to buy these things because I know there's a market for it.

[Alan Sisto]

There's always. I mean, there's still a market for it. Now, I could sell it probably for twice what I paid for it, but I'm not going to.

[Sara Gavin]

I'm still reeling from how long ago 2007 was.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. To think that somebody born on the day that the Deluxe Edition of the Children was published is graduating high school this year is shocking.

[Sara Gavin]

No, that's actually not possible. I cannot believe that. I will not believe that. I know.

[Alan Sisto]

Refuse it all you want. All right, we're going to go ahead and get into a deep dive into the Dwarves. I'm really excited about this, folks. So just so that you're aware, I have decided to sort of hand off the, the lead role in writing on this episode for the first time since Sean's departure to my co host. So Sara, tell us what you want to do in this episode about the dwarfs. Where are we going here? And then let's go and get started.

[Sara Gavin]

Okay. So unlike usual, there isn't a chapter or a section that we're going to take in chronological order and work our way through it because we're really looking at the origins of the Dwarves and their culture, their history, all that kind of thing, and it's just not possible to find a piece of text that we can do that with. So what I have done, and I hope everybody is, is happy to follow along with this is. Yeah, I know. I've gone into the. The history of Middle Earth.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay, right.

[Sara Gavin]

And I've started with the War of the Jewels and it is the bit with Elfwina and Pengaloth, okay. And they're talking about the Dwarves and the origins of the Dwarves and I've used that as our stepping stone. And from bits from this, we, Alan and I are going to step out and look at elements that come from the peoples of Middle Earth, okay. From the Book of Lost Tales, even. Yeah, even into the appendices again, appendix E with the language. But don't worry, James, I am not treading on your language toes.

[Alan Sisto]

No, no. And I was gonna say this isn't the last time that Pengaloth is going to make an appearance because James is going to be leading us through an episode on Pengalad's stuff. I don't even know what we're covering on that once we get his run going. So let's go ahead and start diving in. Where do we begin today?

[Sara Gavin]

Okay, well, I would love for you to start with note two on the origins of the Dwarves from the War of the Jewels.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay. The Naugrim are not of elf kind, nor of mankind, nor yet of Melkor's breeding. And the Noldor in Middle Earth knew not whence they came holding, that they were alien to the children, albeit in many ways like unto them. But in Valinor the wise have learned that the dwarves were made in secret by Aule, while Earth was yet dark. For he desired the coming of the children of Iluvatar, that he might have learners to whom he could teach his crafts and lore. And he was unwilling to await the fulfillment of the designs of Iluvatar, Wherefore, though the Dwarves are like the orcs in this that they came of the willfulness of one of the Valar. They are not evil. For they were not made out of malice in mockery of the children but came of the desire of Aule's heart to make things of his own after the pattern of the designs of Iluvatar. And since they came in the days of the power of Melkor Aule made them strong to endure. And this is the part that, folks, it sounds very familiar because it's something right out of Aule and Yavana. Therefore they are stone hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity. And they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more heartily than all other speaking folk. And they live long, far beyond the span of men and yet not forever aforetime. The Noldor held that, dying, they returned unto the earth and the stone of which they were made. Yet that is not their own belief. For they say that Aule cares for them and gathers them in Mandos, in halls set apart for them. And there they wait, not in idleness, but but in the practice of crafts and the learning of yet deeper lore. And Aule, they say, declared to their fathers of old that Iluvatar had accepted from him the work of his desire and that Iluvatar will hallow them and give them a place among the children in the end. Then their part shall be to serve Aule and to aid him in the remaking of Arda after the last battle. And now it moves on to note number three. Now, these fathers, they say, were seven in number and they alone return in the manner of the Quendi. So we're talking about Fayar and Hoar and you know, coming back in form to live again in their own kin and to bear once more their ancient names. Of these, Durin was the most renowned in after ages. Father of that Dwarf kin most friendly to the elves whose mansions were at Khazad Dum. Now, the footnote to this says that it is here that Durin of Khazad Dum most renowned of the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, enters the Silmarillion. It is not said here that Durin's people were the Longbeards. But his association with the Longbeards goes back in fact to the Hobbit where at the end of the chapter A Short Rest, Thorin says in the text as originally published he was the father of the fathers of one of the two races of Dwarves, the Longbeards, and my grandfather's ancestor in the tale of The Naugliffring. There were the two peoples, the Dwarves of Nagrod and the Dwarves of Belegost, and the latter were the Indrfangs, or Longbeards in the Quinta. The same was true, or at least no other peoples were mentioned, although the Longbeards had become the Dwarves of Nograd, and this remained the case in the Quinta Silmarillion.

[Sara Gavin]

Thank you. Lots of information in those notes.

[Alan Sisto]

Lots. And some very familiar and yet some, like, refreshingly different or shining a new light on things.

[Sara Gavin]

Exactly. As you said about halfway through that some of this is going to feel very familiar because it comes straight out of the Silmarillion, or rather, we will.

[Alan Sisto]

Say the other way around.

[Sara Gavin]

Into the Silver Lion.

[Alan Sisto]

Right? Exactly.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. But this is supposedly the tale of the origins of the Dwarves being told by Elfwina to Pengaloth. And as I said before you started reading, Alan, it comes from the War of the Jewels in the section called concerning the Dwarves. Now, already we can see that sense of secrecy that surrounds the Dwarves and all that they do because the Noldor have got no idea about where they came from.

[Alan Sisto]

Part of that might just be Noldor, typically. I don't really care.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. Yes. We're so far above everybody, why would I worry about these stunted people? Which, of course is how they refer to them. Now the text also makes it very clear that despite their mysterious origins, the Dwarves are not evil. But this was certainly not always the case, right?

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. And yet, I tell you what, I really do like that. I like that distinction, that explanation of why they are different from the Orcs. And it had to do with the fact that they weren't made out of malice in the mockery of the children. But like you said, it wasn't always the case. Because if we go back a lot further in the history of Middle Earth, all the way back to the Book of Lost Tales 1, we hear of a servant of Melko, of course, the predecessor to Melko, called Fukil or Fangly, who corrupted the men of Middle Earth and who had hosts of Nauglaf or Dwarves. And a note here from Christopher states that in the early writings, the Dwarves are always portrayed as an evil people. And that is interesting, isn't it? It really is. And it continues because this idea of the Dwarves being evil is emphasized again in the Book of Lost Tales 2, in which we get a more expanded version of what would eventually become the story of the Nauglafring we mentioned in the last episode. The story of how Thingol was killed by dwarves who claimed that the Nauglafring, which now contained a silmaril, you might know it better, as the Nauglimir had been made by the dwarves and therefore belonged to them. When Thingol refused, the dwarves killed him and took it.

[Sara Gavin]

Now, in Book of Lost Tales 2, we learned that when the dwarves make the Nauglaf ring, they pour into it all their bitterness and hatred for Tinwell, which of course is the precursor name for Thingol.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, exactly right.

[Sara Gavin]

As well as the Curse of Meme.

[Alan Sisto]

It's so interesting that that name shows up so early.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yes, yeah. And of course, by the time we properly encounter Meme in the Silmarillion when he's, you know, when he encounters Turin, it's a totally different character.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah. It's not the same guy, right?

[Sara Gavin]

No, no, no, no. This meme in Book of Lost Tales 2 is a dwarf of stature, somebody quite important.

[Alan Sisto]

Not a petty dwarf. Right.

[Sara Gavin]

He had taken this gold from the dragon Glorund. Now, when Tynwelland offers them payment, the dwarves demand, quote, for our labours during seven moons, each seven jewels of Valinor and seven robes of magic that only Gwendolin can weave. And Gwendolin was of course the early name for Melian.

[Alan Sisto]

Melian. Right.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. And each a sack of gold. But for our great labor during three moons in thy halls unwilling, we ask each three sacks of silver and each a cup of gold wherein to pledge thy health, O King. And each a fair maiden of the woodland Elves to fare away with us to our homes.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, we just want some silver and some slaves.

[Sara Gavin]

Some slaves. Well, you can imagine Tin wellance response to that.

[Alan Sisto]

He didn't even like Baron asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. Do you think he wants to give elven maids to dwarves? No, not so much. Of course, none of this ends well. Tinwellant withholds almost all payment, certainly the slaves. And the leader of the dwarves, Naugaldur, leads a raid on the elves in which Tinwellant and many other elves are killed. He also tries to kidnap Gwendolyn. And that's a bad idea. None of the dwarves can lay hands on her due to her magic. Now, Gladyr is eventually killed in battle by Beren, who takes back the Nauglifring. And that element certainly did survive into the published version the.

[Sara Gavin]

Of.

[Alan Sisto]

Of the Silmarillion. The idea of taking that and a note from Christopher here is very interesting. He says. But however much the chief actors in this tale are enspelled or blindly carrying forward the mysterious dictates of a curse. There is no question but that the dwarves in the original conception were altogether more ignoble than they afterwards became more prone to evil to gain their ends and more exclusively impelled by greedy. That Doriath should be laid waste by mercenary orcs under Dwarvish paymasters was to become incredible and impossible. Later it is even said that by the deeds of Naugladur have the Dwarves been severed in feud forever since those days with the elves and drawn more nigh in friendship to the kin of Melko.

[Sara Gavin]

This is just not what we know of the Dwarves, is it?

[Alan Sisto]

This is radically different. And in the outlines for Gylfannon's tale, the Nauglath are an evil people, associates of goblins. In a rejected outline for the tale of the Nauglaf Ring, again the tale of the Nauglimir, the necklace was made by certain Uvanimor Nautar or Nauglaf Uvanamor, being defined elsewhere as monsters, giants and ogres. Now, if you compare that to what we read in appendix F about the Lord of the Rings, they, the dwarves, that is, are not evil by nature and few ever serve the enemy of free will, whatever the tales of men may have alleged. So apparently Elfwina was drinking something. That's how we're just going to retcon this whole thing. Elfwina was just making this up. Tales of men have alleged. Yeah, yep, yep.

[Sara Gavin]

He'd had one cup too many of mead, I think, on this one. But it's just so interesting that Tolkien starts off with a vision of the Dwarves and then he does a complete 180 total.

[Alan Sisto]

180. It's mind boggling because none of the other elements of the story change that radical. I mean, sure, we get rid of the cap, right? Dot a vildo. That's a shame. But there's no like 180 into an evil dog, let's say. In fact there's a good dog. But he was always there. This is such a radical shift, such a total, like you said, 180 from evil dwarves.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes, yep, indeed. In fact, another note further on says this. A very curious statement is made in this concluding part of the tale that those were days of happiness in the vales of Hithlum. For there was peace with Melko and the dwarves who had but one thought as they plotted against Gondolin. Now, presumably peace with Melko means no more than that Melko had averted his attention from those lands, but nowhere Else. Is there any reference to the Dwarves plotting against Gondolin?

[Alan Sisto]

So interesting. Yeah, yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

You know, why do you think Tolkien started off with having the Dwarves evil in the beginning and then totally changed his mind?

[Alan Sisto]

The only thing I can think of is he just wanted some more free will antagonists, you know, rather than the Orcs. The idea of Dwarves and elves not getting along has certainly remained, but maybe just some sort of conflict that. I don't know, I don't know. I really truly, genuinely have no clue as to why he made them so evil in the beginning. Was there something in the source material? I know that we will talk a little bit about some of the sourcing for the names like the Edda. Right. Is there anything in there? I'm not familiar with them. Is there anything in there that suggests that Dwarves could be evil?

[Sara Gavin]

We're talking about the original Dwarves on which Tolkien drew.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

I am not as au fait with the Edda as I should be, but I don't think the Dwarves were painted as evil.

[Alan Sisto]

No, no, I didn't think so either. I mean, I think I would have remembered that if. Could be wrong, folks. Totally. I'm just disclaiming any expert knowledge of the Eddas, of any of the Eddas, poetic or prose. But yeah, it's interesting that he changed his mind. So, so interestingly so.

[Sara Gavin]

It is fascinating. But you know what? I think he was right because it is so much more interesting to have two different peoples, two different cultures who don't like each other. But they're both against Melkor or Sauron.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. In other words, sort of politics makes strange bedfellows. Or the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing here.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yes, yep. And then of course, that gives him the opportunity to show what happens when disparate cultures work together. When we get to Legolas and Gimli later on.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Sara Gavin]

So I keep hearing the prefix now when talking of the Dwarves. Now Grimm, now glamir, now glador, etc. Alan, do you think you could indulge in a little word nerdery in the P5?

[Alan Sisto]

You know, I think I could take some notes and include that in there. I think that'll be good. Yeah. All right, well folks, we'll be right back after this to talk more Dwarves. Now, recently I've been telling you all about Mando, the whole body deodorant. And now that I've had more time to use their products, I just wanted to come back and let you all know, hey, I still really like it. And as Much as I like their stuff, I'm a lot more happy that my 13 year old son likes it. Know what I mean? One of the things that's great about Mando is that it's a whole body deodorant. You don't just slap a bit of it on your armpits, use it any place on your body that could use a bit of odor control, like your feet and well, yeah, there too, wherever really. It's clinically proven to block odors all day and control them for up to 72 hours. All their products are baking soda free and paraben free and they come in solids, creams and sprays. Now Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick Deodorant Cream Tube Deodorant, two free products of your choice like their mini body wash or their deodorant wipes, which I love for travel and free shipping and as a special offer for our listeners. New customers get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code. Now that equates to over 40% off your starter pack when you use code [e-mail] S-H O-P M A N D O.COM and please support our show. Tell them we sent you Smell fresher, stay drier and boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando introducing the new Volvo XC90 with seven seat versatility, Google built in and advanced safety features for all your precious cargo. The new Volvo XC90 designed for life. Visit volvocars.com us to learn more. Now. Soon we'll get back to the stunted folk. But before we do, we want to remind you there's a lot more talk going on at the Prancing Pony Podcast than just us.

[Sara Gavin]

Noldor well, that's just rude. The PPP has an amazing listener community. They're always coming up with great questions and discussions across all our social media spaces. Check out our Common room on Facebook, our dedicated subreddit, Twitter and more on Facebook.

[Alan Sisto]

Just look for the Prancing Pony podcast. You're going to want to follow the page to get news and episodes, but you're going to want to join the group to get in some great discussions.

[Sara Gavin]

On Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube. We're PrancingPony podcast or if you prefer Reddit, find us there at R prancingponypod.

[Alan Sisto]

And if you want daily Tolkien content, check out today's Tolkien Times on the PPP YouTube channel and on all your favorite podcast apps. It's my short format daily show with everything from Middle Earth Map Monday to Silmarillion Saturday. And then there's my new twice weekly streaming of all fun things Middle Earth on the PPP plays. Be sure to check both of them out on the YouTube channel for all the PPP productions at YouTube.com rancingponypod Sara, take us back underground. Tell us more about the Dwarves.

[Sara Gavin]

All right, well clip the light onto your hard hat and let's get going. I'm going to pick up with Note 4 on the origins of the Dwarves. Just a reminder from the War of the Jewels. All right, so note four in the darkness of Arda already the Nau Grim wrought great works, for they had even from the first days of their fathers, and marvellous skill with metals and with stone, though their works had little beauty, until they had met the Noldor, and learned somewhat of their arts. Then they gave their friendship more readily to the Noldor than to any others of elves or men, because of their love and reverence for Aule, and the gems of the gnomes they praised above all other wealth. But in that ancient time the dwarves still wrought iron and copper, rather than silver and gold, and the making of weapons and gear of war was their chief smithcraft. They it was that first devised mail of linked rings, and in the making of Bernies and of hauberks, none among elves or men have proved their equals. Thus they aided the Eldar greatly in their war with the Orcs of Morgoth, though the Noldor believed that some of that folk would not have been loath to smithy also, for Morgoth had he been in need of their work, or open to their trade for buying and selling, and exchange were their delight, and the winning of wealth thereby and this they gathered rather to hoard than to use, save in further trading on to note 5 the Naugrim were ever as they still remain, short and squat in stature they were deep breasted, strong in the arm, and stout in the leg, and their beards were long. Indeed this strangeness they have, that no man or elf has ever seen a beardless dwarf, unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts, that to us would seem more deadly for the now Grim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature, or in gait, or in voice, nor in any wise save this, that they go not to war and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls. It is said also that their womenkind are few and that save their kings and chieftains, few Dwarves ever wed, wherefore their race multiplied slowly and now is dwindling, as we talked about at great length.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Yeah, we did the math on that.

[Sara Gavin]

You did the math on that. And I nodded a lot.

[Alan Sisto]

That's fair.

[Sara Gavin]

And on to note six, the father tongue of the dwarves Aule himself devised for them and their languages have thus no kinship with those of the Quendi. The Dwarves do not gladly teach their tongue to those of alien race and in use they have made it harsh and intricate so that of those few whom they have received in full friendship, fewer still have learned it well. But they themselves learn swiftly other tongues. And in converse they use as they may the speech of elves and men with whom they deal. Yet in secret they use their own speech only. And that, it is said, is slow to change. So that even their realms and houses that have been long and far sundered may to this day well understand one another. In ancient days, the Naugrim dwelt in many mountains of Middle Earth. And there they met mortal men, they say, long ere the Eldar knew them. Whence it comes that of the tongues of Easterlings. The many show kinship with dwarf speech rather than with the speeches of the elves.

[Alan Sisto]

Ooh, that's interesting. There's a lot of interesting things there. I mean, I thought the idea of their language not having kinship with that of the men or elves was interesting. And that unlike the Elvish languages, the Dwarvish language doesn't change.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, that's the whole point. The Noldor come back from Valinor and find that they're no longer able to communicate directly with the elves who have remained behind because their language changed. I mean, essentially the whole reason Tolkien wrote the stories was to explain why Elvis changed. But Note 4 is particularly interesting because it gives us a really nuanced view of the Dwarves. Yeah, Tolkien presents them as skilled, industrious and very important allies in the fight against evil. But he also hints at their potential for greed and even sort of that moral flexibility. You know, they might sell to Morgoth too. And this multifaceted portrayal really adds depth to the Dwarven race, making them more than the typical, I should say stereotypical fantasy creatures. I really thought that was an interesting bit. I will say, I think the first thing to note here is the Dwarves were really skilled in crafts from the beginning. Even if they didn't know how to make them pretty even if they weren't working with the fanciest materials all the way back in the time of the Twilight. Their expertise, metalwork, stone crafts is the things we know about. But initially what they made was not beautiful. It was just functional. And it's fascinating that it was only after they interacted with the Noldor that their artistry got better. And that says. Whether he says it explicitly or not there's got to be more than just a few chats here and there. There's a cultural exchange going on. There's influence between these races. And that is a contrast to what we looked at before that focused more on the enmity between the Dwarves and the Elves.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, some fascinating stuff in there, isn't there? I do wonder because it's the opinion of the Noldor would be just as likely to give their services to Melkor. You know, I do wonder to what extent. That's just the Noldor being snotty.

[Alan Sisto]

The Noldor also think the Dwarves returned to stone and Earth when they die. So, yeah, yeah. Noldor aren't always right.

[Sara Gavin]

Now, talking of the Noldor and the Dwarves we're told that this preference for the Noldor, this seeming preference stemmed from their shared reverence for Aule who is of course, the valor associated with craftsmanship. But I don't think we hear that much about the Noldor having reverence for Aule, do we?

[Alan Sisto]

Not much. I mean, we know that they are the most craftsman of the Houses of the Elves. But there is something in the history of Galadriel and Celeborn that gives us a little something on this. Moreover, Galadriel was a Noldo and she had a natural sympathy with their minds. Talking about the Dwarves and their passionate love of crafts of hand sympathy much greater than that found among many of the Eldar. The Dwarves were the children of Aule and Galadriel, like others of the Noldor had been a pupil of Aule and Yavanna in Valinor.

[Sara Gavin]

No, there you go.

[Alan Sisto]

That's about it. But it is interesting.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah. It's lovely when we get to tie in all these bits from all over the place, isn't it?

[Alan Sisto]

And it really does take that, doesn't it? I mean, there's so many strands and they go everywhere, but yeah, absolutely.

[Sara Gavin]

Now, there's a significant association of the Dwarves with warcraft as their primary focus was on creating weapons and war gear.

[Alan Sisto]

Yep.

[Sara Gavin]

But it's really fascinating to learn that they invented chainmail.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[Sara Gavin]

And they were unrivaled in creating armor. We're also told that the Dwarves significantly aided the Eldar in their war against Morgoth's Orcs. So I do think the Noldor are being a little bit unfair.

[Alan Sisto]

I think they are. I mean, I also sort of feel like the Dwarves choice of, you know, making armor and weapons, this is a recession proof industry. If you're going to be an arms dealer, you're going to do just fine. No matter what.

[Sara Gavin]

There's always going to be conflict.

[Alan Sisto]

There's always going to be conflict. So capitalize on that. But there is a sense of moral ambiguity. The suggestion that Dwarves might have been willing to work for Morgoth for the right price, though again, I think that is the Noldor being just the Noldor. It does though add a potential layer of complexity for the Dwarves characterization because it would suggest that they were not uniformly aligned with good. And again, this makes sense. This is a transition period, right? We're seeing, okay, Tolkien is no longer viewing them as totally evil, but there is sort of this ambiguity in, you know, what side they might choose. And in fact, it reminds me that some of that does carry over into the published legendarium because in the Silmarillion and of the Rings of Power we read about the battle of the Last Alliance. I'm going to go to that text right now from Imladris. They crossed the Misty Mountains, talking about the Last alliance by many passes and marched down the river Anduin. And so came at last upon the host of Sauron on Dagorlad, the battle plain which lies before the gate of the Black Land. All living things were divided in that day. And some of every kind, even of beasts and birds were found in either host. Save the elves, only they alone were undivided and followed Gil Galad. Of the Dwarves, few fought upon either side, certainly, though some did. But the kindred of Durin of Moria fought against Sauron, so the Longbeards were good. But there were some Dwarves fighting on the side of Sauron even in the final published version of Legendarium.

[Sara Gavin]

Wow. And it's interesting though, isn't it, that that is only mentioned in the Silmarillion. We don't hear about that in the Lord of the Rings at all.

[Alan Sisto]

That's correct. When Elrond's talking about the Last Alliance. For example, in the Council of Elrond, he doesn't mention anything like that.

[Sara Gavin]

There's no maybe he's being diplomatic, seeing as he's maybe.

[Alan Sisto]

But I'm pretty sure Legolas wouldn't bother being diplomatic.

[Sara Gavin]

No.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, especially when. When the Dwarves start giving him grief for letting. For letting Gollum escape. You are less kind to us. Yeah. So, I mean, it is interesting that that did survive, but only like you said in the Silmarillion. And it does seem, though, some sort of a hint left over from those earliest writings about Dwarves being evil. But then it's connected with this idea about how they accumulate and hoard their wealth rather than using it, which also seems to sort of play into that moral ambiguity in the sense that. Because we don't. We don't look at that as a good thing.

[Sara Gavin]

We don't.

[Alan Sisto]

Because what dragons do, and certainly Tolkien doesn't. Hoarding is bad, right? Exactly.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. Yeah, that. And that's a fascinating thing because from there we could actually point to a character like Thorin, for example, who does not behave well around hordes.

[Alan Sisto]

No, he does not. It's interesting. You know, we talk about how good it is moving to 21st century economics, you know, we talk about how good it is to save. Saving is just a kinder word for hoarding. But I mean, I don't know, it's. It's interesting. I mean. Yeah, yeah, they're saving it just for its own sake. They're not using it. And it's the way dragons do too. You know, they don't enjoy a single bit of the wealth that they're lying on, but they know it down to a penny. And you get the same sense here.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. And I've always thought the difference between saving and hoarding is that saving is putting something by for when, you know, you might well need it later.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true, that's true.

[Sara Gavin]

Whereas hoarding is, you know, this is what billionaires do. They just gather and they keep and it's all theirs. And they are, you know, very dragon like, in that kind of sense, aren't they? They're just sitting on their wealth.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. For no. For no value other than the fact.

[Sara Gavin]

For no value. And they make no good use of it at all. It's just, you know, my pretty and I stroke it on a regular basis. And that's it really, isn't it? Yeah. What. You know, one of those we could view as being. Yeah, that's normal. Saving is a normal thing that normal people at least attempt to do because we all know that at some point there will be a bump in the road and we might need that money.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Whereas hoarding. Hoarding is about sitting on stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

For its own sake and sort of just. Just to keep it out of anybody else's hands.

[Sara Gavin]

Right, right. But of course, by the time we get to Gimli.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

He seems to behave in a very different fashion.

[Alan Sisto]

Very different fashion. And I think a lot of that, though has to do with his exposure to Legolas and his incredible reverence for Galadriel. Seems to have changed him in a way, though we don't get a lot of him pre those moments. You know, we. We get mentioned of him really only as the Son of Glowing. You know, I mean, it's like that's who he is and why he goes on the quest. It is interesting to watch his development and I feel like that's sort of a harbinger for the Dwarves of the fourth age. At least I hope it is in terms of the, you know, friendship with. With the other races. But coming back to that whole idea of moral ambiguity is there anything that we see in that. I was going to say in the legendarium, but let's talk specifically about the Lord of the Rings of the Hobbit because those are the. The ones that were published in Tolkien's lifetime. Published, the way we know for sure. Sure. That he intended them to be. What sort of leftovers of this are there?

[Sara Gavin]

I see. It's in the Hobbit.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. I was gonna say more in the.

[Sara Gavin]

Hobbit because the Dwarves are very happy to push Bilbo in front of them.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

If there was a bus trundling along, they'd throw him under those wheels.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely. He's. He's even smaller than they are. More likely to survive. That would be their rationale.

[Sara Gavin]

So, you know, they are quite willing to do that. There's also the time when they have Beorn's Ponies and the Dwarves are the ones. Like, do we have to send them?

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. There's actually a brief moment of like, well, do we need to. Wouldn't it be good if we kept them? Gandalf's like, you don't want to do that.

[Sara Gavin]

No, no, no. You have no idea.

[Alan Sisto]

You don't want to get to the find out stage of that.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah. So there's a little bit of that in there, isn't there?

[Alan Sisto]

Because the Elves or the Dwarves, I should say, feel very pragmatic in the Hobbit. Like they're just to a fault, you know, in the sense that whatever is most practical and serves their ends they're very much an. Ends justify the means.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. And that is a bit of moral ambiguity.

[Alan Sisto]

It is, isn't it? Yeah, very much so. Yeah, that definitely carries through.

[Sara Gavin]

Whereas I really don't see that in Gimli, who is of course the main dwarf that we see.

[Alan Sisto]

Pretty much the only dwarf we get extended time with.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Lord of the Rings. Yeah. I mean, outside of the Council of Elrond is about it. Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. So it's interesting that Tolkien focuses just on one dwarf. We do get more than one elf and more than one Hobbit and more than one human, but we just get the one dwarf on which we have to predicate all of our understanding of Dwarven behavior in the Third Age.

[Alan Sisto]

But until we get to the appendices, of course.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I see it more in the Hobbit.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I agree.

[Sara Gavin]

So in Note 5, we get more detail about the unique racial identity that Tolkien crafts for the Dwarves in which beards seem to have particular significance.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, my goodness. That was interesting, wasn't it? Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

The emphasis on beards for both genders, for instance, that's very interesting because of course it challenges typical fantasy tropes about gender differences.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Now I'm trying to picture the female dwarves would be identified by their armor, which is tiny little leather triangles, strategically placed.

[Sara Gavin]

Don't frank this.

[Alan Sisto]

And also how disturbing that would be.

[Sara Gavin]

Well, yes.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, man. I actually, as interesting as that is, and it is very interesting and it's certainly more challenging to that fantasy trope. I thought the idea that they were practiced, that they were essentially born with these beards, that they had these beards since then birth, like, whoa, what is that all about? What is that?

[Sara Gavin]

It's no wonder most of the dwarf women like, I'm not doing that.

[Alan Sisto]

And then of course, we get the extreme reaction of a beardless dwarf. Right. That it's done to shame them. And it's so shameful that they would prefer to die. It underscores this incredible cultural significance of beards in Dwarven society, which is just another detail that adds more of that depth, you know, more of that. It's one of those things that Tolkien does to give us a fleshed out race. And it's just so interesting. Again, since birth. No wonder they don't want to be beardless. I mean, it's. It's part of their very nature from the very beginning.

[Sara Gavin]

It's part of their identity, isn't it?

[Alan Sisto]

It really.

[Sara Gavin]

You have something that is part of your identity. Losing it is losing yourself, losing you.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Especially when everybody else in your culture has a them, has that thing that identifies them as a dwarf and you've Lost that thing that identifies you as a dwarf. Yeah. Another interesting addendum to this whole thing about beards is in the Nature of Middle Earth, sort of the Unofficial History of Middle Earth, Volume 13, if you will. In footnote one on page 340, Tolkien states that when I came to think of it in my own imagination, beards were not found among Hobbits as stated in the text, nor among the Eldar, not stated. And of course, we know that they are for Kiran. So that's a whole other story. But Tolkien continues, all male dwarves had them. Interesting. He doesn't say all dwarves. He says all male dwarves. The wizards had them, though Radagast, not stated. Had only short, curling, light brown hair on his chin. Men normally had them when full grown. Hence Amer, Theoden, and all others named, but not Denethor, Boromir, Faramir, Aragorn, Isildur, or other Numenorean chieftains. End quote. And I could go off on that because that is so interesting that. Just a trace of elf blood and you get no beard. No beard for you. But note that it says all male dwarves had them. So here, at least, it's unclear about the dwarf women. It doesn't say only male dwarves have them.

[Sara Gavin]

No, it just says that all male dwarves have them. Yes, And Tolkien can be a little bit bad on occasions in actually mentioning the female of the species, even acknowledging they exist. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, to me, it just sounds like in his mind here is just all the male Dwarves and he is just thinking about.

[Alan Sisto]

He's only thinking about the male men and the male elves and even the male wizards, because, of course, there aren't any female wizards. So. Yeah, he's just maybe thinking he's just picturing men of various races.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I would say so. But let's talk about the dwarf women a little bit more, because we. We did discuss this in the last episode. The scarcity of dwarf women and the low marriage rates, which present rather interesting questions about dwarf society and biology.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, Demographic problems galore.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, yes. I mean, even I was mathing that math and going, that math doesn't work. No, it explains their slow population growth. But it also adds a touch of melancholy to the possibilities. The future of that race.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. I mean, it really does suggest the future of their race is, well, very limited. You know, I mean, unless something changes, this is a race headed to extinction because of the reproduction rate.

[Sara Gavin]

Well, it has to be, doesn't it?

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, we talked about that. They'd have to have, like, four kids each and Yet Tolkien says that's very rare. And that's assuming whatever number we use, which I think was like 20% maybe of the women that don't get married, it might be much higher than that. If it is, they're in even more trouble. But they'd have to have that just to.

[Sara Gavin]

Just to have population standstill and then.

[Alan Sisto]

Assuming no deaths at all of young dwarves.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Wild.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, Indeed. Now, we also talked about the fact that Dwarf women are conspicuously missing from the legendarium. According to the Quintusilmarillion, in the peoples of Middle Earth, Aule made only the fathers of the dwarves. And nowhere in the legendarium is there any record of the making of female dwarves. Now of Durin the Deathless, the eldest of these fathers are dwarves. Tolkien observes that his line never failed, and that's in peoples of Middle Earth. So he must have had children. But there's no mention in the published legendarium of the dwarf women who must, one thinks, have been their mothers.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, unless they start sprouting out of holes in the ground like the elves think. Yeah. And then, of course, because Dwarf women are so rarely seen in public, it adds to the mysterious nature of Dwarven culture. But specifically women in Dwarven culture, this very secretive underground civilization. But it is interesting that even though you can't tell the difference from them physically, not by the way they walk, not by the way they talk, not by the way they dress or the way they look, the fact that you can tell. The fact that. Well, you can't really tell, but what makes them difference? The only difference between the Dwarven women and the Dwarven men is that Dwarven women hardly ever leave their home. They don't go in warfare, and they basically don't have a public presence. So it implies these rather traditional or maybe even arguably backwards gender roles in terms of public presence and warfare as well. Kind of an interesting mix of. And I don't want to get too far afield into modern politics or anything like that, but. But there does seem to be this conflict between. We can't tell the difference between them physically. They look and act and sound the same, which is rather progressive, if you might say. But then they also stay at home in their bowers. They don't go to war and they don't go out in public, which is like sort of hyper conservative. I mean, it's a really interesting blend.

[Sara Gavin]

It is. But if you put that side by side with the notion that many, if not most, of the Dwarf women don't get Married.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Sara Gavin]

And really, given the numbers, we know that all of them could. If all Dwarf men and Dwarf women wanted to, all of them could have.

[Alan Sisto]

Two husbands, it seems, because remember, they're. They're outnumbered two to one.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, exactly. So they, you know, they all could get married and have children, but many of them choose not to. And it's built in. They choose not to.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

So they're not forced to. They're not forced not to. They get the choice. So it's very strange that Tolkien weaves in both progressive and regressive ideas in Dwarven culture.

[Alan Sisto]

It really. I didn't expect. I don't think I'd even thought about that until you pointed it out. But you're right, because Dwarves can do math. I mean, clearly, they're very good at finance. They're very good at understanding their. Their economy and trade. So you have to imagine that one of their statisticians somewhere has a spreadsheet that basically points to, oh, crap, we're in trouble as a race. Like, we got to have. We got to have more dwarves, more baby Dwarves with beards. Which is weird, but okay, if we're going to survive as a people. So why don't they. And I don't want to. I'm glad he does it, but why don't they mandate or require or force their female Dwarves to. To reproduce and bear more children? I'm glad they don't. We're very orcish if they did. But it's interesting because they still clearly, as a race then value that choice and value that freedom more than the survival of their species. That's something.

[Sara Gavin]

Something. That is something. Yeah, I know. I've. Honestly, I have twisted myself in knots about Dwarven culture and Dwarven society. You know, gone down that rabbit hole far too deep, frankly. And I just. I don't get it. No, I don't get it. Because there's so many things that don't gel here that a lot of it doesn't make sense when put side by side.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. It's. It's very like. It feels like there's an opposite. Like these two things are not just a paradox, like a conflict, in a way.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It's very interesting, though.

[Sara Gavin]

It is, it is. And we're going to dig deeper in a little while because there's more depths to plumb here. Dig even deeper into what Tolkien was doing with the whole fathers of the Dwarves and possibly creating the mothers of the Dwarves. We'll get to that in a bit. But let's Turn to note six first.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, actually before we do. I do want to hear about that. But that mother and father thing actually reminded me something I wanted to mention earlier. Did you notice that the father tongue was the language? Was the language mother tongue, not the mother tongue. And again, I think that just reflects on what we've observed already about the role of males and females in Dwarven society. Anyway, to Note 6 as you said.

[Sara Gavin]

Which is fine because Note 6 is about language. And let's face it, calling it father tongue is an interesting choice for language there, isn't.

[Alan Sisto]

It? Sure is.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. But we learn that the language of the Dwarves is presented as a core element of their identity. Like the beard, the language and it's divine origin because it comes from Auli. It's complexity deliberately made so so that people can't learn it and the secrecy that surrounds it. This all contributes to the un unique character of Dwarven culture. We're going to talk a bit more about dwarf speech later on.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

But I think there's an interesting tension between the Dwarves desire to keep their language and by extension their culture isolated. And on the other hand their ability and their need in many cases to interact with other races. Because you can't trade without interacting.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. You absolutely can't trade without interacting with. So the connection between dwarf speech and some human languages in this case I think it says the Easterling languages hints at that far reaching impact of dwarf culture on the wider world of Middle Earth. And we see some of that emphasized in a passage from appendix F in the Lord of the Rings, a section that I'll be looking at more deeply later in the season with James. There we learn that it was according to the nature of the dwarves that traveling and laboring and trading about the lands as they did after the destruction of their ancient mansions, they should use the languages of men among whom they dwelt yet in secret. A secret which unlike the elves, they did not willingly unlock, even to their friends. They used their own strange tongue, changed little by the years, for it had become a tongue of lore rather than a cradle speech. And they tended it and guarded it as a treasure of the past. Few of other race have succeeded in learning it in this history. It appears only only in such place names as Gimli revealed to his companions and in the battle cry which he uttered in the siege of the Hornburg. That at least was not secret and had been heard on many a field since the world was young. Baruch. Khazad. Khazad. I may Knew axes of the Dwarves. The Dwarves are upon you. I love that.

[Sara Gavin]

Well, I saved that bit especially for you because I enjoy that.

[Alan Sisto]

Ah. I just. Now I feel like I need an ax in my hand. I need to leap over the body of a dead Warg. And that's only 17. All right.

[Sara Gavin]

And I'm quite glad we're separated by thousands of miles and a screen. So. Yeah. The slow changing nature of the Dwarvish language, this seems to fit well with their strong sense of tradition.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And their own resistance to change. And this is actually consistent with their portrayal through Tolkien's work.

[Alan Sisto]

That is.

[Sara Gavin]

I mean, let's face it, they can hold a grudge for how many thousands of years.

[Alan Sisto]

They do indeed. What was that? You know, fast in friendship and in enmity. Right. But once they're. Once they've achieved that, they are loyal to that. Right. Including the enmity. So it takes a long time.

[Sara Gavin]

Do not knock over a dwarf's pint because that will be held against you.

[Alan Sisto]

For the rest of time and your great grandchildren. Yeah. Oh, yes, you're right. It's a complete reflection of their glacial pace of everything in comparison to the other races, whether it's population growth, language change, cultural change. They just. They are very slow in moving. And that's just deliberate and purposeful. And it's who they are.

[Sara Gavin]

It is, but it's also not healthy.

[Alan Sisto]

That's the thing, I think. Just as we see how every race struggles with something that isn't healthy. Right. The Elves struggle with wanting to hold on to their past and keep it as the present, preserve it.

[Sara Gavin]

Like an amber embalming, as Tolkien uses.

[Alan Sisto]

The word in his letters. Men have this desire for immortality that they have no claim upon. And the Dwarves just are arguably too stubborn and too resistant to change.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah. And when you put that together with their really terribly slow population growth, I mean, this. This is a race that was never going to last because they don't want to move with the times. In fact, they wouldn't understand the concept of moving with the times. Thank you very much. No, and that. That desire to have themselves remain almost frozen in time.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

This is. This is not a healthy way for any culture. Culture to be.

[Alan Sisto]

No, that's a fair point. I wanted to add one other thing. I noticed the phrase a cradle speech.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. I wondered if you'd pick up on that.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. So they're not teaching their bearded infant dwarfs. I'm never going to let that go. They're not teaching them the Dwarvish language. They're not Teaching them Khuzdul. As young Dwarves, they're speaking whatever language is the lingua franca in the region they're in, which is going to be presumably Westeron, just about everywhere. But they teach it to them later as a language of lore, a tongue of lore. Very interesting.

[Sara Gavin]

I'd like maybe someone learning Latin or Ancient Greek or something these days.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah, it's just really an interesting thing. I thought that was definitely worth pointing out. But, yeah, we don't hear a lot of the Dwarvish language even in the published legendarium.

[Sara Gavin]

Nope, that is true. So shall we move on to the next section of the origins of the Dwarves?

[Alan Sisto]

Huh? Absolutely. So we've discussed this idea of the Dwarves having seemingly little interest in the perpetuation of their species, alongside Tolkien's statement that of Durin the Deathless, the eldest of the fathers of the Dwarves, that his line never failed. Now, Tolkien had thought about this, apparently at some length while he was formulating his ideas on the making of the Dwarves, initially by Aule. According to Christopher Tolkien, his father had written a number of roughly drafted passages on the topic, and it's in these notes, some of the most detailed of which are found in the later Quintusilmarillion, which is also in the War of the Jewels, in the section of the Naugrim and the Edain, that the only mention of the making of female Dwarves may be found. This is also where we can track Tolkien's development of thought on the issue, which is given as notes to the text. And I'm just going to go through notes A to erase. But it is said that to each dwarf, Iluvatar added a mate of female kind, yet because he would not amend the work of Aule, and Aule had yet made only things of male form. Therefore the women of the Dwarves resemble their men more than all other speaking races.

[Sara Gavin]

I'm sorry, that made me chuckle as well.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, sorry about that, Aule. You should have thought of Illuminar having a laugh over there, going, you women have beards.

[Sara Gavin]

But I am wondering just how far you could have gone with that one.

[Alan Sisto]

Though I know that could have been really interesting. So he does go on to point B. He wrought in secret in a hall under the mountains in Middle Earth. There he made first one dwarf, the eldest of all, and after he made six others, the fathers of their race, and then he began to make others again, like to them, but of female kind, to be their mates. Okay, so now we get Aule making the females. Note C. Aule made one and then six. And he began to make mates for them of female form. And he made six. And then he wearied. Thus he buried six pairs. But one, Durin, the eldest, he laid alone.

[Sara Gavin]

That made me laugh as well. Yeah, I'm a bit too tired to make a seventh.

[Alan Sisto]

I gotta take a break. I'm sorry. Union rule. I gotta be done.

[Sara Gavin]

So you get a wife and you get a wife. Yeah, but you don't. Sorry about that.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, and it's sort of like he's just making them in reverse order. So I made all the guys and now I'm making the wives, but I'm assigning them in. In backwards order so Durin doesn't get one. Why isn't it the seventh one that's made that doesn't get one? Why is it the first one? Anyway, note D. And Aule took the seven dwarves. No, you cannot make a Disney joke here.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, and laid out to.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, didn't. Didn't we discover that Durin actually means sleepy or something like that?

[Sara Gavin]

Hi ho.

[Alan Sisto]

So Ali took the seven dwarves and laid them to rest under stone on far sundered places. And beside each of them, except for Doran, he laid a mate as the voice of bade him. And then he returned to Valinor.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, in note D Doran gets one.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. Oh, that's right, because in note D he does. Yeah, you're right. So note E. Then Aule took the seven dwarves and laid them to rest under stone and far sundered places. And beside each he laid his mate, save only beside the eldest, and he lay alone. Sorry. Durin and Aule returned to Valinor. Union rules again. And waited long as best he might. But it is not known when Durin or his brethren first awoke, though some think that it was at the time of the departure of the Eldar Oversea. We referenced this note actually a couple episodes ago when talking about Durin and speculating about when he might have awoken.

[Sara Gavin]

Yep. I'm just imagining the first time he meets up with the other six.

[Alan Sisto]

You got a wife.

[Sara Gavin]

Sees. Hang on, who's that with you? And you? What's going on here? They're all like, yeah, mate, didn't you get one?

[Alan Sisto]

Didn't you get one? I don't understand. They were handed out, you know.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh boy. So let's go through these notes then and see what they actually reveal to us, apart from us making silly jokes about them. Note A indicates that Aule made no dwarf women, but that Iluvatar created them as mates for the males that Auli had made, and they looked exactly the same because.

[Alan Sisto]

Because is funny and has a clear sense of humor.

[Sara Gavin]

Now, this is the only one of the notes that explains the existence of the dwarf women in this way. All the others show Aule himself as creator of the. The females. But we see from these notes from the War of the Jewels, Tolkien offers several possible explanations for both their creation and their number. The possible involvement of both Iluvatar and Aule in dwarf creation highlights is a really rather complex side to the theology of Middle Earth.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And the sometimes conflicting roles of different divine figures. I mean, what difference would it make, right, if Iluvatar was the creator of the dwarf women rather than Aule? Ooh, I know, right?

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, he's making them from Aule's own blueprint. So, yeah, I don't know how much of a difference, but part of me, you know, with. With the male dwarves. With the dwarves, he gave them their sentience and their independent existence after they were physically created. If Iluvatar was the one who made the dwarf females, they would have had that inherently from the very beginning. I wonder what difference that would have made. I don't know.

[Sara Gavin]

No, I know, because one of the reasons why the dwarves so revere Auli is because he is literally their maker.

[Alan Sisto]

Mahal. The maker.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes, exactly. So what's that gonna do?

[Alan Sisto]

Would that change how they respect the dwarf women were made by somebody else? But how do you disrespect the ones made by your boss's boss? I don't know.

[Sara Gavin]

It just. I don't know. It feels like that could be awkward at parties.

[Alan Sisto]

It could be. It could be. I. Do you feel like with five notes, and that being the only one, it suggests that maybe the other options are more the ones we should consider. So both notes B and C show Ali creating only six females to the seven because he got tired. And maybe not even for good reason. I'm thinking of when Tulkas married Nessa. And we just read that, you know, and Tulkas grew weary and he rested.

[Sara Gavin]

Unbelievable.

[Alan Sisto]

Tulka slept.

[Sara Gavin]

I absolutely love that Vanessa's sitting there going, what? Really?

[Alan Sisto]

Already?

[Sara Gavin]

Someone needs his Wheaties.

[Alan Sisto]

Seriously. It's interesting that we're told in note C that Durin was laid alone. So how would his line continue if he's not given a wife? This is particularly important because it is only Durin who's singled out for that comment, that his line never failed. None of the. It is not said of any of the other Dwarves that their Line never failed. And yet Aule supposedly made them these unnamed female mates.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I mean, how does Durin maintain his line? Parthenogenesis or something? It is not explained here because that makes no sense.

[Alan Sisto]

Speed dating.

[Sara Gavin]

I mean, does he go round the wives of the other dwarves? Dwarves? You know, none of this makes sense.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, he lived long enough that maybe. Well, yeah, you're right, because then we're going to get into issues of the purity of his line. You know, if he ends up marrying the daughter of. I mean, if these are the only men, these are the only Dwarves that are made, we've got seven males and six females. Those. Those females are going to give birth to Dwarven children. Maybe one of their daughters then marries Durin. Well, wait a minute now. The long beards are half. Long beard, half whatever. Yeah, so that is a really good question.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. I don't know what Tolkien was thinking here, but there's more math, not mathing.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah, definitely more math, not mathing. I don't know. I don't know how to go with that one.

[Sara Gavin]

No, no. By note E, Tolkien had reverted to his original idea of only six dwarf women to the seven dwarf fathers, with the eldest, Durin being buried and alone.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Sara Gavin]

And again, it's why he decides. This is just not apparent from the text. But this decision raises that conundrum of the continuation of Durin's line. But this was not the end of Tolkien's musings on the issue. He didn't let it alone here.

[Alan Sisto]

Never is.

[Sara Gavin]

No, he continued this discussion in his letter 212 to Rona Beer in 1958, in which he reiterates the idea of there being some seven dwarf fathers and six dwarf women or mates that. I'm sorry, but that word really makes my eye twitch. Writing that auli had made 13 and in a note at the bottom of the page, confirming one, the eldest alone and six more with six mates, and not for the first or indeed the last time. Tolkien appears to have been mulling over an issue in his writing that he fails to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. And not just for him, also for.

[Alan Sisto]

Us, very much so. There are plenty of other times where that's been the case. There's another thing that jumps out at me with these notes on the origins of the Dwarves, and it's his use of the number seven. Right. We kind of made the seven Dwarves joke. But the number seven holds real significance in Tolkien's work, just like it does in real world mythologies. Now, in Middle Earth, this is exemplified by These seven male Dwarves who were the progenitors of their race. The significance is further reinforced by the seven rings of power given to the Dwarf Lords and the prevalence of seven stars and Dwarvish emblems, including that of Durin's Folk. Now, of course, the number seven, typically in most real world mythologies, represents completeness or perfection. And it seems to be an interesting concept that Tolkien has incorporated in his own mythic structure.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. I mean, I would be happy about that. Definitely not feeling dopey.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, I'm still grumpy, though.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah, that goes without saying. But, you know, as a doc in this particular topic, I think we can carry on this conversation.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow.

[Sara Gavin]

I know. I'm gonna leave it there, though. The pattern of six pairs plus one is another recurring numerical motif in Tolkien's legendarium. We actually get this in various forms. It mirrors the creation of the Valar. Six pairs of Valar plus Melkor. This pattern emphasizes uniqueness and leadership, with the singular one often representing a central or pivotal figure. And in the case of the Dwarves, this structure highlights the special status of Durin among the Seven Fathers. So he gets to be special, but he also gets to be on his own and yet have his line and yet have his.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Right. Maybe he just sneezed and it created more. Couldn't. How else am I going to get Sneezy in there?

[Sara Gavin]

We're not. Not without some real pushing.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sara Gavin]

Good job.

[Alan Sisto]

No, couldn't. Couldn't do that. Anything else? Now, Tolkien does seem to like the number seven, right? We see the seven levels of Minas Tirith, seven rivers of Osirian in Valerian. I mean, even the word Osirians uses the element seven. Like, we've talked about seven stars above the Tree of Gondor, seven stones, the Palantiri of Gondor. And of course, we talked about, you know, we mentioned the primary world. I'll just give you a few examples. Right? We got seven Wonders of the Ancient World, seven Heavens of Islamic tradition, seven deadly Sins and seven virtues in Christian tradition, seven chakras in Hinduism and Buddhism, seven sages in ancient Greek culture, the seven Branched Menorah in Judaism, and even the seven Days of the Week based on the seven classical planets.

[Sara Gavin]

All right, so we can see that the number seven has great importance, but that carries on into our primary world folklore and story. I mean, obviously, the seven Dwarves in Snow White. We've already done that.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Don't be bashful. Tell us more.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh. Oh, very good.

[Alan Sisto]

To get the last one in.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. Had to get the last one in Very, very good. The Poisoned apple goes to you. There's also the Seven Seas of maritime tradition, the Seven League boots in European folklore, the Seven Samurai in Japanese culture, which of course was popularized by Akira Kurosawa's film. So the number seven is consistently used across various cultures and religions and literary works. Well, including Tolkien's.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And it represents completeness, perfection, or significant groupings.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And by using these sort of consistent numerical patterns, Tolkien's adding depth and kind of an interconnectedness to his mythology. Because that 7, we see it in so many different things, like we talked about, from Minas Tirith to the Valar to the Dwarves. These patterns create a sense of order and design in the creation of Middle Earth. I think you're on mute. Workday is starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn job collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like Flexpto or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get [e-mail] jobs finding where you fit LinkedIn knows how this episode is brought to you by Stay Farm Knowing you could be saving money for the things you that you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Foreign folks, if you're enjoying the Prancing Pony podcast, please consider supporting the show by joining the Fellowship of the Podcast. That's what gives me the time and resources that I need to work on making the show the best that it can be. When you join, you become part of an amazing Discord community and they include live episode recordings, hangouts every month, all sorts of fun stuff in our Discord. You also can get episode postscripts, add free episodes, free merch and more.

[Sara Gavin]

And you could also become part of our Questions After Nightfall episodes or even join us as a guest in the North Wing. So Please go to patreon.com prancingponypod to show your support and join the Fellowship of the Podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

You can always help us out by giving us a rating and review on Apple Podcast and a rating on Spotify. And please recommend us to your friends. Sara, would you go ahead and keep us going in this conversation? Maybe move on to the Awakening of the Dwarves?

[Sara Gavin]

Absolutely. So this bit on the awakening of the Dwarves comes from the peoples of Middle Earth, and it's in the section Relations of the Longbeard Dwarves and Men. It focuses on the questions of the places where the seven fathers of the Dwarves awakened in Middle Earth. In the Dwarvish traditions of the Third Age, the names of the places where each of the seven ancestors had awakened were remembered, but only two of them were known to Elves and Men of the West. The most Westerly, the Awakening place of the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broad Beams, and that of the ancestor of the Longbeards, the eldest, in Making and Awakening. The first had been in the north of the Ered Lindon, the great Eastern Wall of Beleriand, of which the Blue Mountains of the Second and Later ages were the remnant. The second had been Mount Gundabad in origin, a Khuzdul name which was therefore revered by the Dwarves, and and its occupation in the Third Age by the Orcs of Sauron was one of the chief reasons for their great hatred of the Orcs. The other two places were eastward, at distances as great or greater than that between the Blue Mountains and Gundabad. The arising of the iron fists and stiff beards, and that of the Blacklocks and Stone Foots. Though these four points were far sundered, the dwarves of different kindreds were in communication, and in the early ages often held assemblies of delegates at Mount Gundabad. In times of great need, even the most distant would send help to any of their people, as was the case in the Great War against the Orcs. Third Age 2793-2799 Though they were loath to migrate and make permanent dwellings or mansions far from their original homes, except under great pressure from enemies or after some catastrophe, such as the ruin of Beleriand, they were great and hardy travellers and skilled roadmakers. Also, all the kindreds shared a common language. Now there follows a footnote to this text. The reference is to the beginning of Appendix A, Book 3. The passage in the text is difficult to interpret. My father refers here to four places of awakening of the seven ancestors of the Dwarves, those of the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broadbeams, the ancestor of the Longbeards, the Iron Fists and Stiff Beards, and the Blacklocks and Stonefoots. None of these names of the other six kindreds of the Dwarves has ever been given before. Since the ancestors of the Firebeards and the Broadbeams awoke in Ered Lindon, these kindreds must be presumed to be the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost. In the margin of the typescript my father wrote later against the present note he Durin wandered widely after awakening. His people were dwarves that joined him from other kindreds west and east. And at the head of the page, he suggested that the legend of the making of the Dwarf should be altered, indeed very radically altered to a form in which other dwarves were laid to sleep near to the Fathers.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay, that's interesting because it connects to what we just talked about with how Durin might have found a mate in his line not failed.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. So there had to be other dwarves maybe buried elsewhere.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. It's sort of that question that we get. You know, if Adam and Eve were it and then they had Cain and Abel how did. How did mankind continue after that? Right. I mean.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

If that's all there is. That's. That's, you know, a math problem. So here Durin wanders widely after awakening because, of course, he's not. He doesn't have a mate yet. So he's trying to look for one, apparently. And his people are dwarves from all those other kindreds. That's interesting. So there's sort of a mishmash, a hodgepodge, if you will, of all the other peoples of the Dwarves. I thought it was also interesting that you have two awakening here. Two here and two here. But only the one by himself.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

And he does sort of have to draw from the other houses. But let's go back then to what we know from the Silmarillion about the awakening of the dwarves. Right. Iluvatar's command to Aule. You got to lay them in stone chambers not to be awakened until the first children, the firstborn, the elves have arisen. So he places the Seven Fathers in different areas of Middle Earth in the Silmarillion, we don't know where, except for Durin. Right. The eldest of all lay alone at Mount Gundabad in the north of the Misty Mountains. That significance, of course, of that place. We talked about this a little bit in dealing with the war. It certainly explains the Dwarves hatred towards the Orcs that later occupied it. Durin, of course, would later found the line of the Longbeards. We actually do have their Khuzdul name, Sigyn Tarag. And these are the dwarves most friendly to the Elves and Men. They're usually referred to as Durin's Folk, hence the name of that part of the appendix.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. Now, the chapter of Dwarves and Men in the Peoples of Middle Earth Tells us that two other Dwarves were laid to rest in the Ered Luin, or Blue Mountains. And they founded the lines of the Broadbeams and the Firebeards who later lived in Nogrod and Belego. And the other four were laid to rest in two pairs in Rune. They founded the lines of the iron fist, the stiff beards, the black locks and the stone foots. Now only two of these locations were known to Elves and men, which again highlights the secretive nature of the dwarf culture.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[Sara Gavin]

So it's not something that they tell everybody that you know, this is our history, this is our culture. This is where we came from. They just don't tell anyone.

[Alan Sisto]

You don't need to know. Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Now this is actually a significant change from the book of Lost Tales 2 in which there are only two groups of dwarves. The Nauglath of Nogrod under their king Naugladur and the Indrafangs, the Longbeards of Belegost under their king Bodruith. Now both groups live south of Artanor, known later as Doriath.

[Alan Sisto]

That is interesting to go from two houses to seven. But of course it's less of a radical change than going from evil to decentralized.

[Sara Gavin]

Absolutely.

[Alan Sisto]

We do learn from the text that these Dwarven clans maintained communication. You got to wonder how. I think that's an interesting idea. Despite their distance. But that Mount Gundabad served as this sort of meeting up point. Right. To have delegates come together every so often for some sort of annual or semi decade.

[Sara Gavin]

Dwarven shindig.

[Alan Sisto]

Dwarven shindigs. I like that. I was thinking conference, but I like shindig better. And of course that unity is exemplified by their mutual aid during the war against the Orcs, which we talked about last episode. It shows the Dwarves ongoing struggles and their place in Middle Earth conflicts. I just thought it was really interesting that they, you know, would. Would send people all the way to Mount Gundabad from the Ettard Luin and from Rune.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. It's a long old way.

[Alan Sisto]

That is a long way. Also we learned one other thing in that passage that I remember as you were reading. I thought, oh, I want to take a note on that. They were skilled road makers.

[Sara Gavin]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

So not only were they stone craftsmen and metal, you know, they could make things out of metal and stone. They could make roads.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. And that indicates their engineering prowess and their ability to move if they need to. Not that they want to, but they can if they need to.

[Alan Sisto]

Loathe to migrate. But yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, the common language among all these Kindred suggests that strong cultural bond, even though they're geographically far apart. And we'll continue to delay that, but we will talk about the Dwarven language in just a bit. I want to go on to the footnote, though, which provides some more intriguing details. We learned this is the first time that the names of all the Dwarven clans are revealed and identifies the Firebeards and Broadbeams awakening in Ered Lindon as pretty much almost certainly the Dwarves of Nagrod and Belegost. And that connection links these newly named Kindreds to the established dwarf realms in Tolkien's earlier works.

[Sara Gavin]

Yep. And these notes reveal a more complex origin for the Dwarves than we previously knew, with multiple awakening places and intermingling of kindreds. Whilst these marginal notes that we were reading and suggested changes demonstrate Tolkien's continuous process of refining and expanding his mythology, even in his later works.

[Alan Sisto]

Very Tolkienian.

[Sara Gavin]

Very Tolkienian. And the suggestion to alter the legend of the making of the Dwarves to include other Dwarves laid to sleep near the Fathers. Again, we can see this is him continuing to niggle.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

At his mythology.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, wait a minute. But what about. And what if. Oh, I better change that.

[Sara Gavin]

This change would significantly alter the understanding of dwarf origins.

[Alan Sisto]

It would. It absolutely would. I mean, how does that change the story going forward? I. There's a lot of changes to it.

[Sara Gavin]

It really throws up in the air, the whole legend that the Dwarves have. I mean, it's more than a legend to them. It's their kind of spiritual belief that there are seven in the beginning. And these are made by Aule.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And possibly six wives. Who knows? But that's it. And now he's. Now Tolkien is thinking, no, we actually. I think we have to have more. Where did these come from?

[Alan Sisto]

Right. We had 144 elves. We need to probably have a few more dwarfs.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. Because 13 isn't going to get you that far.

[Alan Sisto]

No, no.

[Sara Gavin]

And what happens if, you know, half of those Dwarf women say, yeah, no.

[Alan Sisto]

Not doing that, not interested. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a problem. All right, so one last note on this. Going back to the nature of Middle Earth again, we learned the following. The matter of the Dwarves, whose tradition, so far as they became known to Elves or men, contained beliefs that appeared to allow for rebirth, may have contributed to the false notions above dealt with. But this is another matter which already has been noted in the Silmarillion here. It may be said, however, that the reappearance at Long Intervals of the person of one of the dwarf fathers in the lines of their kings, for example, especially Durin, is not when examined probably one of rebirth, but of the preservation of the body of a former king Durin, say, to which at intervals his spirit would return. But the relations of the dwarves to the Valar and especially to the Vala Aule are, as it seems, quite different from those of elves and men. Whoa.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Whoa.

[Sara Gavin]

Head exploding.

[Alan Sisto]

Yet the preservation of the body of Durin, to which his spirit would return, well, that would certainly solve the problem we were asking about last week. How do they know to give this guy a Duran name? Because it wasn't like Duran's son was Duran the Second. You know, you had intervals of two, three, four generations between one during the next Durin list intervals. And we were like wondering, well, how when this baby's born, do you know that this is a guy that looks so much like Durin? Well, that would certainly do it. Would he be born. That's just. I gotta think that one.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I know.

[Alan Sisto]

That is.

[Sara Gavin]

My head hasn't gotten around all of that yet.

[Alan Sisto]

Being born as a old man, basically because Durin was, what did we decide? Something like 2400 years old or so when he died. That's.

[Sara Gavin]

That would be a shock.

[Alan Sisto]

I don't want to be that.

[Sara Gavin]

I was expecting a beard. I wasn't expecting that.

[Alan Sisto]

No, definitely not. Congratulations, Mrs. Duran.

[Sara Gavin]

It's a Duran.

[Alan Sisto]

It's a Duran. Whoo. Oh. But this almost suggests no birth at all. His spirit would return to the body. So like it was just Durin wakes up. Hey, everybody, I'm back.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, Lord, he's back.

[Alan Sisto]

Much to the chagrin of whoever happens to be sitting on the throne at that point. But maybe he would only come back when a king had died or was. I don't know.

[Sara Gavin]

Otherwise it would be awkward.

[Alan Sisto]

That's just wild. I got to think more about that one. That might actually be a P5 topic, right?

[Sara Gavin]

I mean, talk about a complex spiritual belief system.

[Alan Sisto]

Boy, that is that. That might not even be reconcilable with anything else. But coming back to that note from the History of Middle Earth, it emphasizes the dwarves relationship with the Valar, especially Aule, differs from the relationship that the Elves and men have with the Valar, right?

[Sara Gavin]

I mean, they already have a different belief system anyway because to them Aule is their creator, not Illuvata heart anyway. But here we get. Well, I don't know what we get. We get a whole bunch of head.

[Alan Sisto]

Exploding weirdness about reborn into an Old man's body.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I mean, does this suggest a form of immortality that is unique to the dwarves, which is different from Elven immortality or human mortality? What's going on here?

[Alan Sisto]

It does, it does really create a third branch of that. So it's different from Elven immortality because elves come back in a new body. So they're not coming back to their old body of Durin in this case. They're going back to a new body, retaining the memories of their old lives. Men, of course, humans, I should say, simply die, as you know, as we do, and go where the elves know not. But Dwarves, or at least their seven eldest, I mean, we only see it in Durin, but the implication is that it's the Seven Fathers come back, but only they get to come back.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I mean, it does imply that it's more than just Durin because it says the reappearance at long intervals of the person of one of the others.

[Alan Sisto]

And for example, especially Durin.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I mean, maybe he gets to do it more often, but it does imply that the others do too.

[Alan Sisto]

And then you have their belief that they are going to be set aside in the Halls of Mandos to assist Aule in rebuilding Arda after the last battle, which suggests again, an immortality of some kind, certainly a spiritual immortality, maybe sans body, until it's time to come together and rebuild the Earth. But that's different. They don't go where the men go. They get stuck in Halls of Mandas, probably beneath the ground, shorter ceilings, but. Yeah, that is interesting. Very interesting.

[Sara Gavin]

I know when, when I found these notes, I just sat and read them and thought, now I've got to read that again.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah, that definitely takes multiple readings to kind of sort your way through that.

[Sara Gavin]

It does. Now we've been promising two or three times that we're actually going to focus on the language. So let's get back to. This section is going to give us a little bit more on the culture and then we're going to go more into the language. So over to you again, Alan.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, well, these two notes are both from the peoples of Middle Earth. The first note comes from the section the Appendix on Language and then the second note comes from the section TypeScript F2, the languages at the end of the third age. So that would of course be one of the drafts of the second half of the appendix F that we read. Alright. So coming to the first note, the Dwarves are a different case. They are a hard thrawn folk for the most part, secretive, acquisitive laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries and of benefits, lovers of stone, of metals, of gems, of things that grow and take shape under the hands of craft, rather than of things that live by their own life. But they are not, and were not ever among the workers of willful evil in the world, nor servants of the enemy, whatever the tales of men may later have said of them. For men have lusted after the works of their hands, and there has been enmity between the races. But it is according to the nature of the dwarves that traveling and laboring and trading about the world, they should use ever openly the languages of the men among whom they dwell. And this is the part that we read earlier. Right. Yet in secret. A secret which, unlike the elves, they are unwilling to unlock even to those whom they know are friends and desire learning not power. They use a strange, slow changing tongue. Little is known about it. So it is that here such dwarves as appear have names of the same northern kind as the men of Dale that dwelt round about and speak the common speechnow in this manner. Now, in that, and only in a few names, do we get any glimpse of their hidden tongue. The dwarves devised no letters, and though they used such writing as they found current for necessary purposes, they wrote few books except brief chronicles, which they kept secret. In the north, in those regions from which the dwarves of this tale came, they used the Cirth or runes. That's interesting, but I'm going to go straight into the second note. We'll discuss after that. More remarkable, it may be thought that the common speech had also been learned by other races. Dwarves, Orcs, and even trolls. The case of the Dwarves can, however, be easily understood. At this time they had no longer in the Westlands any great cities or delvings where many lived together. For the most part they were scattered, living in small groups among other folk folk, often wandering, seldom staying long in any place until, as is told in the beginning of the Red Book, their old halls under the Lonely Mountain were regained and the dragon was slain. They had therefore of necessity long used the common speech in their dealings with other folk, even with Elves. And there's a footnote to that that I should just read in line. For there was an ancient enmity between Dwarf and Elf, and neither would learn the other's tongue. Now back to the note. Not that Dwarves were ever eager to teach their own tongue to others. They were a secretive people, and they kept their own speech to themselves, using it only when no strangers were near. Indeed, they even gave themselves outer names either in the Westeron or in the languages of men, among whom they dwelt, but had also inner and secret names in their own tongue, which they did not reveal. So it was that the Northern Dwarves, the people of Thorin and Dain, had names drawn from the northern languages of the men of Dale. And their secret names are not known to us for that reason. Little is known of Dwarf speech at this period, save for a few names of mines and meres and mountains. Wow. Wow.

[Sara Gavin]

Huge amount in there, isn't there?

[Alan Sisto]

There is a lot, yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

So we get more about Dwarvish character in the first note.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. Tolkien describes them as hard thrawn.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that word.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, I know. It's quite a northern word.

[Alan Sisto]

It is, isn't it?

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yes, yes. Very, very kind of Yorkshire. But it also. I hear it from my Irish family. They have a word, thran.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, interesting.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes. Really quite similar. And it also means stubborn. So they are hard thrawn. They are secretive and acquisitive, traits that are consistently portrayed throughout Tolkien's works. And these characteristics are further exemplified by their laborious nature and their strong attachment to their crafts and possessions. And it highlights the depth of their cultural identity. This is who they are.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Sara Gavin]

And it's who they've always been and who they always will be. They really don't change, Right, yes, exactly. And their passion for stone and metals and gems is another defining feature. Reflects their connection to the Earth and the resources you find within it. And their preference for their own crafted objects over living things underscores their unique perspective on beauty and value. And that sets them apart from other races in Middle Earth, particularly, of course, the Elves. Yeah, and we also know that the Dwarves are not fond of agriculture. For instance, if we take a peek into the nature of Middle Earth again, Tolkien reveals that the Dwarves had an agriculture which in early times they practiced when isolated and unable to buy grain, etc by barter, they had invented a plough of some sort, which they dragged as well as steered themselves. They were tough and strong, but they did not delight in such labor of necessity. They delighted, obviously, in the making of things. They didn't delight in things that had.

[Alan Sisto]

To be done, like that good tilled Earth is something that hobbits love. Not Dwarves.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes, not Dwarves.

[Alan Sisto]

So we get a bit more on the Dwarves moral alignment here. Tolkien explicitly states, I don't care what anybody else has told you, the Dwarves have never been servants of the evil or the enemy, countering those potential misconceptions. And that again, just adds more complexity to Their character, which, I mean, here's the thing. Their actions are sometimes at odds with other races. We've talked about this before. They're not always in alliance with the Elves, even though they're on the same side. They're not driven by malice. They're driven by their own cultural values, their own priorities, which definitely differ from that of the Elves and even the men as well. Right. We get the mention here of enmity between Dwarves and men, which it turns out isn't really the Dwarves fault, it's the men's fault. They're the ones who are. Are sort of lusting after what the Dwarves can make with their craft. And so there's a history of conflict and misunderstanding, even with men. And of course, that strained relationship along with the one with the Elves, it hints at the Dwarves protective nature towards their creations as well as a potential for sort of culture clashes in Middle Earth's. Well, the more diverse societies, the parts of Middle Earth where the Dwarves have had to go, I'm thinking Dale, for instance, where they're going to be living in close proximity to men. That seems to me to lead to more opportunities for the Dwarves to be misunderstood. Sort of furthering that cycle, I would imagine.

[Sara Gavin]

Absolutely. Because the Dwarves are really secretive, which means that people don't necessarily understand what's going on with them. And then that can lead to the Dwarves not being treated well or approached well or, you know, being treated almost with enmity or in fact, definitely with enmity. And that leads to them just being more secretive.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And it's a vicious circle. You can see how that would happen.

[Alan Sisto]

That is interesting because, you know, I think there's an inherent desire on the part of men and Elves to know a little bit more about these other people. And the more secretive you are, the more you're distrusted. You know, like, I don't know anything about you. How can I trust you if I don't know about you?

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, but then the natural response is, well, you don't trust me. So, you know, why should I.

[Alan Sisto]

Why should I reveal anything? Yeah, right. And you're right, it just becomes a vicious circle.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, absolutely. Now, the text also notes that Dwarf names in the narrative often reflect the naming conventions of the humans who live nearby. And that indicates the Dwarves ability to adapt to local customs. But the rare glimpses of their true language in names suggests a hidden depth to Dwarvish culture. So we get these sort of tantalizing little glimpses, little hints at their secretive lore. But it's fascinating that, you know, they will kind of present themselves in a certain way. Okay, here is my name. And this is the name that I will be known by Outside.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Sara Gavin]

But inside.

[Alan Sisto]

Gimli, son of Glory.

[Sara Gavin]

Just amongst us bros, I'm something else.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And it's something that Tolkien doesn't even tell us. You know, we learn, for instance, that the Westeron is itself translated into English for us. And so we learn Frodo's quote, unquote, real name, Sam's real name. We don't learn the names, the real names of any of the Dwarves.

[Sara Gavin]

Nope.

[Alan Sisto]

So the text draws this contrast between Dwarves and Elves in their willingness to share knowledge. Right. The secretiveness. And it highlights that distinct cultural attitude of both the races. And I also see how this sort of emphasizes the Dwarves sort of practical nature, pragmatic nature, in contrast to the sort of ethereal and very long view that the Elves take. But in terms of historical and cultural memory, Dwarves are described as. How does it put it? Retentive of injuries and benefits. We talked about how long they can hold a grudge. Very much so. This is cultural memory. Not just an individual memory, but a cultural memory that shapes the way they interact with the other people. Temples of Middle Earth. Which of course, suggests a very complex approach to relationships where we're not just looking at what have you done for me lately? We're looking at all your past actions, positive and negative, which ends up playing a significant role in how we treat, you know, we as Dwarves, how we treat these men or those elves.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, Right. We then get a very short piece about the Dwarves relationship with writing and record keeping. But I do wonder if the one thing they do keep records of is, my great, great, great grandfather was once.

[Alan Sisto]

Slighted by a man from this village of this family line, and we shall forever hate them. Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes, meet it is. I set it down. Tolkien states that Dwarves did not invent their own Alphabet or writing system. It clearly wasn't a priority for them. And this is notable given their renowned craftsmanship in other areas. So what this suggests is that there is a cultural preference for oral tradition or practical skills over literary pursuits. Dwarves are not writing novels in their bowers and halls.

[Alan Sisto]

There's not a lot of spare time. No.

[Sara Gavin]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

They're working hard and, you know, the idea of a cultural preference for oral tradition is repeated with the Rohirrim. So it doesn't surprise me to learn that the Dwarves would have the same thing. Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

Yep. We learned that Dwarves use writing systems that they encountered, but only for necessary purposes. Dwarves, we're told, write Few books. Which indicates a culture that's not heavily focused on any kind of written literature. So clearly they're not lounging around reading 50 Shades of Gray Stone at the weekend.

[Alan Sisto]

Gosh, no. Oh no.

[Sara Gavin]

Sorry. Not sorry.

[Alan Sisto]

You should be. You should be sorry though.

[Sara Gavin]

I'm ashamed.

[Alan Sisto]

I am ashamed that that actually fits. Like a beardless dwarf.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, okay.

[Alan Sisto]

Not that bad.

[Sara Gavin]

The shame. The shame.

[Alan Sisto]

So you know, it's. I'm thinking of the notes that they find in the Chamber of Mazar Bul in the Lord of the Rings. You know that is pretty rare.

[Sara Gavin]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

What Balin was doing there in terms of writing. So. But this aligns with what we knew about the Dwarves and their preference for secrecy. Right. They only write brief chronicles. They keep those hidden. And the limited use of writing suggests maybe that the Dwarves prioritize like you said, oral storytelling. But also other forms of knowledge transmissions like craft based learning and things like that. You know, apprenticeships and learning a craft.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

We do learn that the Dwarves of the north use the Kirth, the runes for writing which would enable them to communicate with other races in writing. And that approach to writing and record keeping really is in stark contrast to the very written word focused culture of, of Elves and some of the men like the, the men of Gondor, those who were descended from the Numenoreans, but the Rohirrim maybe share that in common.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. And we do know that the Dwarves along with the Orcs and the Trolls learned the common speech. Westron. And this is clearly driven by necessity because of their scattered living conditions and their interactions with other races. But it's another point that highlights their pragmatic approach to interracial communication. We have to be able to communicate with them. We will just simply learn the common speech and we will keep our own.

[Alan Sisto]

Language because we're sure not going to teach anybody our language.

[Sara Gavin]

Absolutely not. And the widespread use of common speech among Dwarves reflects their again, very practical approach to survival and commerce in a diverse Middle Earth. Because effective communication with other races is absolutely crucial for trade and you know, the occasional bout of diplomacy that might have to break out.

[Alan Sisto]

But definitely trade because we know that they needed to trade for food because that was something that they weren't going to be doing themselves very much.

[Sara Gavin]

Not if, if they didn't have to for sure. Yeah. So despite their general reluctance to adopt what they would see as foreign customs, the Dwarves mastery of Westeron shows that they do have some adaptability.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And there is a recognition of the practical benefits of a shared language in a world where they, they've got to be a minority population.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh yeah, of course they are. I mean they're, they're practically a minority population among themselves because there's so few of them. But certainly, you know, we see that they're scattered in these small groups so they're always going to be in the minority. We learned that the Dwarves proficiency in common speech kind of varied between individuals as any language ability would. But those who are engaged in trade or diplomacy would be more fluent than those who remained isolated. Which actually suggests that maybe the women were particularly less linguistically exposed, if you will. Again, a little frustrating again. I mean, it's like you said earlier, there's some progressive traits and some regressive traits. This would be one that's a little more regressive. The text mentions also the Dwarves no longer had their great cities in the Westlands at this time. Right. I mean, because Khazad Dum was long gone. The Eredlu and you know, Belegost and Nagrod were gone at the end of the first Age, but they instead lived in those small scattered groups leading almost a nomadic lifestyle. So of course they were in, you know, always in the minority. A lot of various historical events, right? Conflicts of the dragons, the loss of their homes, it all led to that Dwarvish diaspora, if you will which in turn would contribute to like regional variations in their culture and their dialects but not really in the language. Right. We learned the language itself doesn't change but maybe the way they communicate because of course they're also adopting the languages, the local languages. So that, that changes based on where these groups are. But overall they're still going to maintain that very, very strong and unique sense of Dwarvish identity.

[Sara Gavin]

I bet they're really strict on not allowing a crossover between Westron and Kuzdul because in the modern world here, in the primary world we get that kind of cross speech.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, mingling of Spanish words here, that's very, very common.

[Sara Gavin]

But I bet the Dwarves are very anti that they, they, you know, they would be. No, you cannot use low weekend or something like that.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm thinking modern which is why I was thinking Spanish sort of the influence, especially living in California. But even English as a language itself has changed. You know, you think about English pre Norman invasion, you know, an exclusively Germanic language, you know, Nordic and all the influence of that and then all of a sudden it becomes Frenchified and you know, you end up with an entirely different language with words coming from Latin. You're not going to have that changing In Coustel, you're not going to have. Over thousands of years. The language isn't going to change the way English has changed. That's significant. I mean, if we were still speaking Old English today, you know.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. It's that equivalent, isn't it?

[Alan Sisto]

It is. It really, really is. It's the equivalent of speaking Old Icelandic today and not ever having any language branch off from it or any influence from other languages. That's wild when you look at the etymology of words. Yeah. Just crazy. Fascinating, though.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah. That note also references the reclaiming of the Lonely Mountain and the slaying of the dragon. So that pinpoints. Yes, when these things are happening. And this event, which of course is known as a quest of Erebor, which we will come to later on. Not later on today, but another time. This is a significant turning point in Dwarf history.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

And it's possible that this would influence their linguistic practices, their cultural identity, because, you know, they now have a base.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

They have a home, rather than being a Dwarfish diaspora.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. And now they can hopefully repopulate a little bit too.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. And the reclamation of Erebor could lead to a resurgence of traditional Dwarvish culture and language use because it could be again, once again, like Gundabad was back in the day, a centralized stronghold for this scattered dwarf population.

[Alan Sisto]

100. Yeah.

[Sara Gavin]

So it could be that there would be increased interaction between the Dwarves and other races after Smaug is defeated. And this, of course, would necessitate even more use of the common speech, but simultaneously reinforcing the importance of preserving their.

[Alan Sisto]

Native tongue, which would maybe be even easier to do in a larger community. Right, so despite using common speech, of course, Dwarves still were very, very, very secretive about their own language. They didn't even speak it when others were around. So again, I'm thinking real world examples. I may not speak foreign languages, but nobody is so secretive about it that they won't speak it if I'm around. I'll hear people speaking in various languages wherever I go. But this linguistic secrecy. The Dwarves went beyond just words. It encompassed entire cultural practices, traditions that were zealously guarded from outsiders. And part of it comes back to one of those theological points we talked about earlier, which is, you know, their language was given to them by Aule, so it was sacred to them not to be shared with those who were not created by Aule, which is everybody else.

[Sara Gavin]

Right. So of course, this means that there's almost nothing known about Dwarf speech.

[Alan Sisto]

Is this Tolkien's just elaborate way of making sure you didn't have to come up with yet another language.

[Sara Gavin]

Probably. Yes. It's a great excuse, though.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. I don't want to have to. I don't want to have to, like, conjugate all these verbs. Verbs. And decline all these nouns. I'm done, man.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah, I've had it. Moving on. So what we do have is limited to names of geographical features like mines and lakes and mountains. Yeah, and the few Dwarfish words known to outsiders, like Khazad I Menu, for example, may well have been carefully chosen by the Dwarves themselves. So it only reveals what they think is either necessary. Necessary to reveal, or something they think will be harmless for others to know. Maybe because they're just terrified and running away because they've just had a thousand Dwarves yelling.

[Alan Sisto]

That's exactly what I'm thinking. We want the battle cry to be known because we want people to be terrified of us. Yeah, absolutely. And then the footnote to the text, the one that I sort of briefly digressed to, mentions that ancient enmity between Dwarves and Elves, which we've talked about before. And that led to neither race being willing to. To learn the other's language, which again explains why the Dwarves would choose Westeron. For the most part, they're not going to choose Sindarin, or certainly they're not going to choose Quenya. And that just adds to that complex interracial relationship situation in Middle Earth. But even with that general animosity, of course we've seen instances of cooperation and friendship between individual Dwarves and Elves. Still, Gimli's not teaching Legolas Kuzdul.

[Sara Gavin]

No, absolutely not. So I think we can start pulling this all together now. This. This idea of the Dwarven language and their attitudes towards it, their insistence on maintaining their secret language and their names, even while they're adopting common speech, it shows their strong commitment to preserving a cultural identity. From the very beginning, this is what it is. This is who we are, and we are not changing. And this dedication to a. What we could always call cultural preservation. This probably extends to other aspects of Dwarvish life, like their techniques for what they make, their spiritual practices. I mean, we do not know how they. Do they worship Aule? Do they speak prayers to him? We don't know very much about this at all, do we? And also, we know nothing of their historical records other than what they tell.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, they write very few chronicles and they keep even those secret.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's an interesting point. The religious practices, thought is one that I would like to know more about. But I also like to know more about that with the Elves, with the men. I mean, there's so little of that throughout that Tolkien sort of purposefully kept that out because he, even though he wanted everything to be sort of compatible with his own beliefs and all this, he, he kept it very kind of barren really, of a lot of that religious stuff. You know, we get a little bit, right, we get all the festivals to ERU and we get, you know, the, the Valar getting together and having, you know, a party in Valinor that's, you know, got some perhaps religious significance with Iluvatar, but not much, right? I mean, in the Lord of the Rings all we get is Faramir looking to the west and saying this is what we do when we have a meal. That's it. Yeah. So not surprisingly we don't get anything from the Dwarves, but they are able to maintain their cultural distinctiveness while still adapting to whatever changing circumstances in their diaspora. It speaks their resilience as a, as a people which fits with the way they were created or they're meant to be this way, way. And of course a really deep rooted sense of identity of who they are as Dwarves. And those two things combined, right? That resilience and yet their ability to adapt and their strong sense of identity, those two things which not really conflict. But you know, sometimes if you have too strong a sense of who you are, you don't want to adapt at all. And sometimes if you adapt too much, you lose your sense of identity. So they are able to maintain that balance and that seems to be a key factor in how they're able to survive and even thrive to some extent and have influence in Middle Earth, even though they are a very small population and very scattered, which would suggest like less power than others. Really, really interesting.

[Sara Gavin]

Yeah, yeah. What an absolutely fascinating culture they are though, right?

[Alan Sisto]

They really are. I still have to figure out how they're able to continue for even five generations. But yeah, it's just really, really interesting stuff. Sara, we've already run a little bit long, but what does Barlow and have for us tonight?

[Sara Gavin]

Okay, so I have a question here and this question is from Yvette in New York. Okay. And she asks in the chapter many meetings in the Lord of the Rings, Gloin tells Frodo about the Dwarves and their labors in Dale and under the Mountain. We have done well, he said, but in metalwork we cannot rival our fathers, many of whose secrets are lost. We make good armour and keen swords, but we cannot again make mail or blade to match those that were made before the dragon came. Only in mining and building have we surpassed the old days. You should see the waterways of Dale Frodo and the fountains and the pools. You should see the stone paved roads of many colours and the halls and cavernous streets under the earth with arches carved like trees and the terraces and towers upon the mountain sides. Then you would see that we have not been idle. I'm not calling them idle at all, but no, no. Why can't they make mail or blade as well as they used to? Why have they got better at mining and building but worse at metalcraft?

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's a good question.

[Sara Gavin]

Isn't it? Though?

[Alan Sisto]

Part of me, like my initial thoughts of this is, oh, we know that things decline in Middle Earth. I mean, that's just sort of the way Tolkien has written stuff, right? I mean, I'm thinking of Al into you work. I mean there's no, there's nobody making the walls of Minas Tirith or, or thanks or Argonaths anymore. You know, those, those are things that people did long ago. You get Gimli talking to Legolas about the stonework in Minas Tirith. There's good stonework here, yes, but the old is better than the new. And that's just a tone that's pretty universal through Tolkien. But she made a very good point. Why is it just metalcraft? They've gotten better at mining and building but worse at metalcraft. And there's a specific turning point. All of this was before the dragon came. So I'm a little. Now that I've defined the question more clearly. Not that you didn't, but now that I've in my own head gone through it and said, oh, it isn't this. It is this. What, what could be the cause of that? I mean, he does say many whose secrets are lost. Maybe because the attack of Smaug came on so suddenly there had not been opportunity to transmit that knowledge through apprenticeships, through learning. And you know, because that's how they, that's how they, they teach. There's nothing books for them to learn the craft of metalsmithing. There's, there's the, the craftsman who's been doing it for 100 years teaching you how to do it. If you don't have masters and apprentices in a craft, how does that knowledge continue? Whereas maybe with mining and building it was different. They, they are able to. Maybe some of that's out of necessity to learn how to do those things that help them survive and thrive.

[Sara Gavin]

But yeah, you would Think, wouldn't you? Tools, the ability to, to produce things via their metal craft would be one of the ways in which they could make their way because they would be able to sell those things.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. For much more, you know, profit than say, you know, building a. A building and selling the building. You know, mining, though mining is probably the simplest in that it's more just labor intensive rather than skill requiring. I mean not that it doesn't take any skill to mind, but in comparison to say crafting jewels or smithing an.

[Sara Gavin]

Armor set thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Maybe their greatest crafts dwarfs were lost in the attack of the dragon.

[Alan Sisto]

Most of them were lost in the attack of the dragon. So it could be that. It could be perhaps like their finest tools or their finest smithing's smithies, their finest equipment. You know, a craftsman's only as good as his tools and those tools are gone and maybe can't be replaced very easily. I.

[Sara Gavin]

Whereas mining would take tools that you could make very quickly.

[Alan Sisto]

Very quickly.

[Sara Gavin]

Whereas the fine tools that you would need for. Yeah, the kinds of metal crafts and jewel crafts that they were doing would be very different.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I would think so. I just keep coming back to the secrets are lost. I feel like it does come back to the loss of the masters of their craft simultaneously with the loss of those who were maybe apprenticing. If we lost two generations of craftsmen, then those secrets are gone because they're not written down. This will teach you dwarfs. You got to write this stuff down.

[Sara Gavin]

Gotta write this stuff down. Although obviously if the library was inside the Lonely Mountain, that probably would have been destroyed by dragonfire, so.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely, he doesn't care about books. His hoard is gold coins and treasure. My horde may be books, but.

[Sara Gavin]

And a delightful hoard it is too.

[Alan Sisto]

It's, you know, I'm trying not to just sit upon it, but yeah, that's the only thing I can think of. But yeah, I'm same combined with the, the overall general tendency to decline. Yeah. Good discussion though and good question folks. That does wrap it up for another episode of the Prancing Pony podcast. But be sure to come back next week when we visit the Unfinished Tales once more to take a closer two episode look at the quest of Erebor.

[Sara Gavin]

Oh, I'm looking forward to that.

[Alan Sisto]

It's going to be fun.

[Sara Gavin]

Now, Alan and I want to thank the members of Team PPP editor Jordan Reynolds, Barca Davis, social media manager Casey Hilsey, event and Patreon community coordinator Katie McKenna, graphic artist Megan Collins and website guru Phil Dean.

[Alan Sisto]

And please take a minute to check out the prancingponypodcast.com it's where you're gonna find show notes, outtakes, Prancing Pony ponderings, and our online storefront where you can get PPP merch featuring all the great episode artwork that Megan's been doing for the PPP since the start of season seven.

[Sara Gavin]

And if you haven't seen any of that, you really need to go have.

[Alan Sisto]

A look because it's amazing the art that she's just done for our project, bringing all of the old seasons of the PPE over to YouTube. So I had to do a season one piece of art, the Silmarills, season two. I mean, I'm excited to see the rest of it as we make that progress. But and I guess that's another thing, folks, if you haven't gone there yet, go to at Prancing pony pod on YouTube because we're, as I'm speaking, we've only got the first couple of seasons up, but we are working on getting all the back catalog of the Prancing Pony Podcast and Rings of Power wrap up, all on one channel, all in video form. So you'll be able to enjoy those.

[Sara Gavin]

Absolutely wonderful. Now, aside from all of that, you will also want to visit our library page because the Prancing Pony Podcast is, after all, a podcast about the books. So if you're interested in a book we've mentioned on the show, you will find a link for it in our library. We do get a small amount of compensation when you make your purchase. We do. Thank you for that.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed we do. We also want to thank our patrons at the Kirdan's contribution tier. I'll start with Demay in Alaska, Chad in Texas, Lance in New Jersey, Joseph in Michigan, Kathy from North Carolina, Carlos in California, Brian in the uk, Jerry from Washington, Joe in Washington, Irwin from the Netherlands, Ben in Minnesota, Anthony in Texas, Zaksu in Illinois, Sarah in New Jersey, Joshua in Massachusetts, Lucy in Texas, Keith in Alabama, Erica in Texas, and Vivian in California.

[Sara Gavin]

And there's also James in Massachusetts, Ann in Kentucky, Sean in New Jersey, Mason in California, Maureen from Massachusetts, Olivia in London, Robert in Arizona, Nick in Wisconsin, Lewis in South Carolina, Thomas in Germany, Craig in California, Bailey in Texas, Kevin in Massachusetts, Julian Watts, Washington, Bruce in California, Joe in Maryland, Nathan in Arizona, and Kevin in Pennsylvania. Thank you all so very much for your support.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed. Thank you.

[Sara Gavin]

Now make sure you don't miss any episodes of the Prancing Pony Podcast. Subscribe now through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, music or your favorite podcast app.

[Alan Sisto]

And one last thing. As always, don't forget to send your thoughts, comments, and, well, most of all, your suggested kind names for the dwarves. I mean, the elves clearly need them to barnuman at the prancingpony podcast.com now.

[Sara Gavin]

If you want your voice literally heard, well, just send us audio of your question, visit pod inbox.com prancingponypod and record your question for us. Please be sure to still email the question to Barleyman, though.

[Alan Sisto]

Please do. Now, even though Barlamon's been a lot more reliable lately, there is still a lot of mail to sort through. We'll try to get to you just as soon as we're able. As always, this has been far too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable listeners.

[Sara Gavin]

But until next time, farewell folks.