407 – River of Dreams

Summary

The Prancing Pony Podcast - Episode 407: "River of Dreams"

Release Date: April 5, 2026
Hosts: Alan Sisto & James Tauber
Theme: Capping off a six-part deep-dive into the history of Galadriel and Celeborn, Alan is joined by Tolkien digital scholar James Tauber. Together, they explore three disparate yet revealing appendices, examining the geography, history, linguistics, and textual tradition of Tolkien’s legendarium, all wrapped in their signature brand of insightful humor, lore erudition, and the camaraderie of friends at a Tolkien-themed pub.

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Episode Overview

The episode concludes the extended exploration of Galadriel and Celeborn as found in "Unfinished Tales," examining three very different appendices associated with their story. Before the text discussion, Alan interviews James Tauber about his cutting-edge work with the Digital Tolkien Project, highlighting new resources for scholars and fans. The three appendices discussed are:

• Appendix C: On the Geography and Borders of Lothlórien and Surrounding Realms
• Appendix D: On the History and Etymology of the Gwathló (the Greyflood) and the devastation wrought by Númenórean forestry
• Appendix E: On Elvish Naming Customs and the Linguistic History of ‘Galadriel’ and ‘Celeborn’

Throughout, the show is rich in linguistic digressions, scholarly details, and amusing banter, with memorable moments and audience questions on matters as deep as stress rules in Tolkien's languages.

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Pre-Text Discussion: The Digital Tolkien Project

(Timestamps: 03:26 – 27:13)

What is the Digital Tolkien Project (DTP)?

• James Tauber: The DTP treats Tolkien’s works with the scholarly seriousness of classics like Homer, leveraging digital tools for text analysis, citation, and comparison. Inspired by his software for studying Ancient Greek, James seeks to bring similar digital infrastructure to Tolkien studies.
• Alan: Praises the project’s depth and its near-decade lifespan.

New Resources

1. Homebase

• Purpose: Digital infrastructure for "The History of Middle-earth" (HoME) series, parsing the dense layering of Tolkien’s drafts, Christopher Tolkien’s editorial work, and fragmentary manuscript variants.
• Technical Challenge: Distinguishing Tolkien’s words from Christopher’s, annotating textual variants, and constructing a robust citation system.
• Quote:

  “Anytime you want to search for something, does a particular term get used? You care whether it’s Christopher saying it vs. Tolkien saying it.” – James (06:49)

• Website: home.digitaltolkien.com

2. Tolkien Books Database

• Goal: Catalog and differentiate every variation of Tolkien’s published books, focusing not just on editions and textual histories, but impressions, ISBNs, and even cover art.
• Collector-Scholar Bridging: Addresses mismatches between bibliographic systems for librarians (don’t care about impressions/covers) and collectors (obsessed with such details).
• Quote:

  “When a library says we’ve got a copy of The Silmarillion... they might care whether it’s illustrated or not, whether it’s paperback or hardback, but they don’t care whether it’s a 17th impression or 18th impression...” – James (18:18)

• User Involvement: Invites listeners to contribute, especially regarding uncertain impression numbers.
• Website: books.digitaltolkien.com

3. Annotation Projects

• Ambition: Going paragraph by paragraph in "The Lord of the Rings," annotating which characters are present, their location, time of day, etc.—meticulous, unglamorous yet foundational work, now public at annotations.digitaltolkien.com.
• Fun Fact: Includes horses! (“You gotta at least track Bill the Pony!” – Alan, 22:20)

4. James’s Academic Journey

• James is beginning a Tolkien-themed PhD in Germany, using quantitative linguistics to analyze how Tolkien’s style and character dialogue differ across texts, genres, and narrative function.

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Appendix C: On the Borders of Lothlórien and the Field of Celebrant

(Timestamps: 27:14 – 39:22)

Key Topics

• Border Confusion: Rectification of a mistake in LOTR Appendix A, which misidentifies the River Celebrant as the border of Gondor.
  • The Celebrant (Silverlode) is within Lothlórien; the actual southern border is the Limlight and its adjacent grasslands, the Parth Celebrant.
  • The land south of Silverlode, although claimed by the elves, was uninhabited and later used by Gondor for military defense.
  • Over time, “Parth Celebrant” referred only to the famous battle where Eorl aided Gondor.

Notable Quotes

• “Just what we need, a tree on the HOA board. Do you know how long those meetings are going to be? ... No we don’t, Treebeard, we don’t.” – Alan (02:20)
• “...there was no visible border between Lórien and Fangorn, but neither the Ents nor the Galadhrim ever passed them. For legend reported that Fangorn himself had met the king of the Galadhrim in ancient days...” – (29:15 paraphrase)

Insights

• The lack of fixed north/south borders in Lórien is realistic—real-world borders often shift or blur.
• The “mutual respect” between Ents and Elves is compared to Nordic “all man’s right” laws, where crossing into each other's lands is permitted but rarely exercised (38:53).

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Appendix D: On the Gwathló (Greyflood), Númenórean Forestry, and Lost Havens

(Timestamps: 40:03 – 102:53)

Sectioned for Depth:

I. Environmental History & Colonial Ledger

• Before Númenor, the lands of Minhiriath and Enedwaith were vast forests; Númenor’s hunger for timber (esp. in Aldarion’s reign) led to massive deforestation—centuries of environmental devastation (45:21–54:35).
• Native populations fled or withdrew to marginal lands, resentful and hostile once resource depredation grew, sometimes supporting Sauron in hopes of relief.
• Notable terms: Denuding, ruthless tree felling, giving no thought to husbandry or replanting.

II. Linguistic Etymology & Place-Name History

• The name Gwathló (‘shadowy river’) no longer reflects the changed landscape; Tolkien explains place-names often persist even when their original sense is lost.
• Deep-dive into the etymology (47:44–54:35): Sindarin gwath (‘shadow’), and lo (‘fen, swamp’)—the evolution from "River of Shadow" to "the shadowy river from the fens".

III. From Númenórean Great Haven to Ruin

• Vinyalondë/Lond Daer (the Númenórean port) started as a timber port, was frequently ruined by the sea, rebuilt, and finally abandoned after devastating floods (c. TA 2912).
• Interplay between geography, environmental change, and the shifting importance of the settlement.
• The appendices grapple with inconsistencies on maps (Pauline Baynes’s placement of 'Swanfleet' and 'Glanduin'), showing how textual decisions shape reader perceptions.
• Notable Quotes:

  “The devastation wrought by the Númenóreans was incalculable... the denuding of the lands was increased during the war in Eriador...” – James (70:09)
  “What they have created is devastation... the extent of the damage is incalculable.” – Alan (73:23)

IV. Meta-Scholarship & Fun Linguistic Moments

• Alan and James share how real-world linguistic rules—Latin, Greek, and Welsh—parallel Tolkien’s phonological and morphological choices.
• "Ask your doctor if Agathurush is right for you. Side effects include deforestation, denuding..." – Alan (78:29)

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Appendix E: On Elvish Names—Galadriel, Celeborn, and the Nuances of Name-Giving

(Timestamps: 105:16 – 119:47)

Key Points

• Elvish Naming Traditions:

  • Father-name at birth, mother-name (sometimes with prophetic or character insight), and epessë (nickname or after-name).
  • Notable example: Gil-galad (epessë), real name Erenion.
  • “...the mothers of the Eldar had insight into the characters and abilities of their children, and many also had the gift of prophetic foresight.” (106:50)

• Galadriel’s Names:

  • Alatariel: Her Telerin epessë, bestowed by Celeborn in Aman (“maiden crowned with radiant garland”), Sindarinized as Galadriel.
  • Father-name: Artanis (“noble woman”), Mother-name: Nerwen (“man-maiden”).

• Celeborn’s Names and Word-Nerdery:

  • Originally meant “silver tree” but later revised: ‘orn’ meaning 'uprising/tall' vs. ‘orne’ for 'tree,' with the latter distinction blurred in Sindarin.
  • Deep etymology of silver: from kyelep → keleb (Sindarin), telep (Telerin), tyelpë/telpe (Quenya); the Teleri prized silver and their word shaped Quenya usage.

• Linguistic Tidbits:

  • The connection/disconnection between Galadriel and galadh (‘tree’): a common misassociation by outsiders after she became the Lady of Lórien.
  • Christopher’s editorial note: proper spellings are Galadhrim and Caras Galadhon (with DH not D).

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Listener Q&A: On the Stress Rules of Sindarin

(Timestamps: 120:02 – 130:22)

• Question: Can you explain the rule for word stress in Elvish languages, and why have you changed your pronunciation of words like Nargothrond/Nargothrond?
• James Tauber provides a lucid breakdown:
  • The standard rule: Stress falls on the first syllable if a word has two syllables. In longer words, it is on the second-last (penult) or third-last (antepenult), depending if the penult is “heavy” (long vowel/diphthong or vowel followed by two consonants).
  • But, real-world pronunciation and poetic meter introduce exceptions (e.g., Nargothrond).
  • Fun Fact: Even Tolkien made mistakes in his own readings!
  • Memorable zinger: “Don’t stress about it.” – James (130:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Fun

• Alan (on Ents on the HOA board): “Just what we need, a tree on the HOA board. Do you know how long those meetings are going to be?” (02:20)
• James (on the DTP): “We’re trying to build this into a really helpful resource for people who want to study the history of Middle-earth, and the material that’s in there.” (08:49)
• Alan (on digital annotation): “Do you track Fatty Lumpkin? ...including the Nazgul steed that gets shot out from under him, because then you gotta track his replacement.” (22:40)
• On the deforestation of Enedwaith: “The tree felling became devastating.” (63:26)
• Meta-linguistic rabbit holes: From S-to-H lenition to the difference between “timber” and “lumber” and the Indo-European origins of words for “five” (penta/quint; 95:11).

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Timestamps by Key Segment

• Intro & Banter: 01:48 – 03:26
• Digital Tolkien Project Interview: 03:26 – 27:13
• Appendix C (Lothlórien’s Borders & Parth Celebrant): 27:14 – 39:22
• Appendix D Part 1 (Númenórean Forestry & Regional History): 40:03 – 65:09
• Appendix D Part 2 (Etymology and Place-Names): 65:09 – 79:07
• Appendix D Part 3 (Tharbad’s Ruin & Final Notes): 79:07 – 102:53
• Appendix E (Elvish Names & Linguistic Deep-Dive): 105:16 – 119:47
• Mailbag: Stress Rules in Elvish: 120:02 – 130:22

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode stands out as a treasure trove for anyone interested in the esoteric details of Tolkien’s world-building—from the nitty-gritty of textual transmission to the living evolution of Elvish languages and the ecological consequences of Númenórean colonialism. Alan and James’s chemistry, warmth, and shared love of “word-nerdery” make complex topics fun and accessible. Even as they wrestle with the tiniest syllabic stress or the fate of the forests, they never lose the tone of friends chatting in a lively Tolkien-themed pub.

For listeners and researchers:

• Check the show notes for links to the Digital Tolkien Project’s new resources.
• If you’re a collector, consider contributing data to the Tolkien Books Database.
• Don’t stress about Elvish pronunciation—every linguist (even Tolkien) sometimes trips over their own rules.
• The human costs of colonial ambition and the resilience of cultures, names, and even ruins, echo “like shadows on a riverbank,” as Tolkien would say.

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May you rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill.

Transcript

[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

On car. Pickup fees may apply.

[Alan Sisto]

Good evening, little masters, and welcome to episode 407 of the Prancing Pony podcast, where. You know, I can't help wondering what the zoning regulations were in parth Celdebrant.

[James Tauber]

Apparently lax enough to let Gondor build a bridge across the limelight.

[Alan Sisto]

Was that approved by the Lothlorien engineers though? I want to know, did they. Did they sign off on that?

[James Tauber]

I'm not convinced they did.

[Alan Sisto]

No, neither am I. Folks, pull up

[James Tauber]

a bench in the common room and join us. I'm James Tauber, the sage of the south, and I'm here with the man of the west who has no intention of crossing the border into Fangorn, Alan Sisto.

[Alan Sisto]

Just what we need, a tree on the HOA board. Do you know how long those meetings are going to be? Come on, be Hasty we need to discuss the do's. No we don't. Treebeard. We don't. Folks, join us as we look at three very different appendices, none of them our own, thankfully, as we conclude our six part look at the history of Galadriel and Celeborn for From Unfinished Tales indeed.

[James Tauber]

Folks, no matter whether you came to Middle Earth through the books, the films, the TV show, or something else, each of you is welcome here in our common room. The Prancing Pony Podcast continues in our 10th season of Reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with conversations, digressions and even speculations.

[Alan Sisto]

Not to mention a few bad puns and jokes here and there. But our purpose is to dive deep into the lore to discuss the story, or in this case, the many different stories, our favorite characters and themes, Tolkien's inspirations, and a whole lot more.

[James Tauber]

And while we take the work seriously, the same can't be said about ourselves. We're just a couple of friends chatting at the pub and we're glad you've joined us, and I'm sure you'll be

[Alan Sisto]

glad you joined as well. But before we get to today's chapter discussion, I want to sit down with my amazing co host and chat about some of the incredible things he's been up to with the Digital Tolkien Project. So, James, you're not just hard at work helping me make PPP episodes. Although you have certainly done that, you're working on continuing to grow the services and functionality of the Digital Tolkien Project. First, just for those who are new to you and your project, give us the quick rundown on what the DTP is.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely. So not just me, but a bunch of people have been working on this for many years.

[Alan Sisto]

True.

[James Tauber]

But the project, which started in 2018, basically takes on the question of what if we treated the works of Tolkien with the sort of serious scholarly attention that is typically given to things like Homer or the Old Testament or Beowulf, and to not only do that, but to adopt the latest digital tools in doing so. So one of the things that I've done for many years outside of Tolkien is in particular work on Ancient Greek and building software for helping people to better understand Ancient Greek and the texts and the manuscripts and so on. And the Digital Tolkien Project is really about taking those same kind of approaches to the works of Tolkien to build tools and infrastructure to help scholars and fans alike to get deeper into the text, to better understand the relationship between different versions of the text, and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

It is quite an amazing thing, and it's hard to believe you said 2018. I didn't realize it had been going for almost eight years now.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

That's incredible.

[James Tauber]

It is.

[Alan Sisto]

And you've done a lot of things. You've added a lot of things. And in fact, over the last few months, you. You've added a couple of new resources to the digital Tolkien project. The first is something that, as a podcaster who spends a lot of time researching and thus finding myself buried in the history of Middle Earth a lot. I'm really excited about this one. Tell us about Homebase.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So from very early on in the history of the digital Tolkien Project, I knew that we would want to tackle the history of Middle Earth. And we did a bunch of stuff initially with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion in terms of establishing text and having a citation system for it, being able to search it. And early on, I had started to work on doing the same thing for History of Middle Earth. But it is so overwhelming, not just because of its size, but because it's just such a different beast, because we're not dealing with a single text. The History of Middle Earth is 12 volumes of Christopher's window into tens, if not hundreds of different texts and thousands of variations of those texts and so on. And so a lot of the approaches that I had developed for other Tolkien texts just don't work for the history of Middle Earth. And a few months ago, I started working with Jenny Star stuff on really trying to solve that problem of how we were going to approach the history of Middle Earth and build infrastructure for better studying it digitally. And one of the first things that we knew we needed to do was, was to separate out Tolkien's words from Christopher's words. Yeah. Anytime you want to search for something, does a particular term get used? You care whether it's Christopher saying it vs. Tolkien saying it?

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, you do.

[James Tauber]

And that means a lot of annotation of the text. But it gets even richer than that, because sometimes Christopher is quoting his father or he's giving telling you what's in one manuscript or telling you what's in another manuscript. And he sometimes defines other manuscripts not as entire texts, but in terms of the textual variants that exist, you know,

[Alan Sisto]

oh, yeah, A or B or, yeah,

[James Tauber]

I'm going to give you the full text of A, but for B, I'm only going to tell you that this phrase in A corresponds to that and so on. And so Jenny and I spent a lot of time coming up with a data model for that, and then we've embarked on annotating the text. And There's a website, home.digitaltalking.com for home base. And it's really going to be the foundation of all of the work that the Digital Tolkien Project does on the history of Middle Earth for the next few decades. This is a multi decade, decade project, for sure. And so we've developed the beginnings of a citation system. So one of the things we introduced, and this is an important point for people to understand who aren't necessarily deep into the history of. We don't have the actual manuscripts that Tolkien wrote. Well, we're not given access to them. Right. They exist, obviously, in the Bodleian and in some cases at Marquette. We have a little bit more access to the Marquette ones. You can go there and look at them, but you can't do that for the Bodleian. What we have is Christopher's presentation of them. And so one of the things that we've done on Home Base is come up with this idea of what we call a P text. And P can stand for priority or primary or professor. It really represents those texts that Christopher presents in the history of Middle Earth in a larger font. And we call those P texts. And so we have a citation system worked out for most of those, at least outside volume. We haven't done volume six through nine yet. But most of the other stuff we've. We've developed the PTexts, and we're going through all the other parts of the text and annotating those. So we have the beginnings of a citation system. We have a search engine and that is sensitive to this P text versus the rest of it. So you can already search for when does Tolkien use a term, as opposed to Christopher, for a lot of the text. So if you're familiar with search, Tolkien, which has the Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, of the Hobbit, unfinished tiles and the letters, this is like that, but it's richer because it makes that distinction between the different kinds of texts. But we're also working on a lot more details about the manuscripts, the different text versions and comparisons. One of the things that we're trying to do is really make it easier to understand what's going on. If you want to sort of get a bird's eye view, for example, of what are all the different texts of the Ayna Lindale, what's their relationship, when were they written and so on. At the moment, you kind of have to dig through four different volumes of the history. Three, three different volumes of the History of Middle Earth and. And. And Jump all about them. We're trying to present, you know, guides to all of these individual stories across, you know, what the different manuscripts are, what the relationship between the text and manuscripts are. So we're hoping over the next few decades, and honestly, it will take that long. Yeah, well, we're trying to build this into a really helpful resource for people that. That want to. Want to study the history of Middle Earth and. And the material that's in there.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, and. And that's signed me up. I mean, I'm excited as can be. I know that this is a dream and this isn't one of the questions that I had listed to talk to you about, but you mentioned not having access to the actual manuscripts. I know you would kill quite possibly me just to have access to the manuscripts, and I wouldn't blame you. Please just give me like, another five or ten years. Do you think that's ever even remotely a possibility that the. I'm assuming it's the estate at this point, because the manuscripts wouldn't be HarperCollins. The manuscripts would be.

[James Tauber]

No, the manuscripts have nothing to do with HarperCollins. It's the estate. Yeah. I mean, it's a similar situation with Marquette. Right. So, yeah, you know, access to the physical manuscripts. And the physical manuscripts themselves are that the ones that are at Marquette are owned by Marquette, but the text that is on them is copyright. So you can go and see the manuscripts at Marquette, but you can't publish anything. Yeah, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And in the case of the Bodleian, you know, there's certain things that they do let you have access to. For whatever reason, they've decided that the legendarium stuff is a lot more restricted. One of the things that I'm really hoping to do, probably starting with Marquette, because I think this will be easier, is to kind of integrate what we're doing at home base with the cataloging that the archives themselves do.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, the Anduin.

[James Tauber]

Well, sort of Anduin. Certainly in the case of Marquette, we have Andwin. And you know, the amazing work that John Ratliff and Bill Fliss and Eric Mullerhada have done in terms of doing some of that mapping of the text to the manuscript so you can find out where does this text occur in the. In what manuscript?

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

I'm hoping to integrate that into home base for volumes six through nine.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that'd be great.

[James Tauber]

I would love to do the same thing for the Bodleian because they, you know, these manuscripts, you know, the archivist at the Bodleian and There's a new archivist, by the way, just started last year. You know, they have all the manuscripts cataloged.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

But at the moment, if you look at history, Middle Earth, there's no link between. You know, Christopher will just talk about a, you know, a toy bit of Playposa or. Yeah, exactly. And one of the things that we're trying to do is kind of map that, and I would love to work with the Bodleian archivists to. To kind of bridge that. So even if you. Even if the average person can't just walk into the Bodleian and see the manuscript, at least if there are opportunities for those manuscripts to become partly available, we've at least got the metadata and

[Alan Sisto]

the structure, the structural, the information.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, man. Fantastic. Fingers crossed, man. We got it. We Tolkien scholars world round need this stuff. The researcher in me, of course, is thrilled about Home Base. So is the podcaster in me. But as the shelves behind me suggest, I'm also a bit of a collector. So the other new project that you're doing, which is the Tolkien Books Database, is equally intriguing. Tell us about that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So this is, again, something that has been on the roadmap for a long time for the digital Tolkien project, and that's just simply to have a database of all of the different variations in the books. I'm coming at it partly from a collector's point of view, but also the textual history. Right. I'm interested in what words differed from

[Alan Sisto]

the first edition to the second edition, but also even those minor tweaks between impressions.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And I've done a lot of work with that on the Silmarillion. It's how I ended up with the 72 copies of the Silmarillion that I have, because I was trying to work out, when was this word changed? Did it get changed between the 18th, the impression of this particular edition and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow.

[James Tauber]

So that's one thing that I've wanted to do, is kind of better model that, but also as a collector, wanting to know what all the different covers that are available and all that kind of stuff. One of the incredible resources that we've had for the longest time is talkingbooks.net and Tolkienbooks US for the UK versions and the US versions, respectively. But there's two unfortunate issues with something like talkingbooks.net, one is it hasn't been updated for a decade. So it's a fantastic resource up until about 2004, 14, depending on which. Which book you're talking about. The second thing is that it's, it's very much focused as a. As a kind of textual content for humans to read. It's not, it's not really a database that you can search and get different views of. So it's very focused on the covers. That's really the only way to. That the different books are sliced and diced. There's no easy way of, of kind of looking across ISBNs or what edition of the text they contain. You can't see all of the, all of the matching versions, like the signature paperbacks, being able to see all of those together. And so in this roughly the same timeframe as Homebase, I embarked on the Tolkien Books database and I'd been planning. There'd been a couple of years of planning sort of how to model this from a data model point of view.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And it's finally come to fruition in the Tolkien Books database, which is available at books.digitaltalking.com and again, a lot of help from Jenny Star stuff on that, but also contributions from a bunch of people. I'll just rattle off a bunch of names for people that contributed information about their collections. Stefan Rademacher, Benjamin Davis, Andrew Trotter Ferguson, of course, of course, Graham Cheadle, Mark Thacker, Clive Shergold. And I'm hoping a bunch of other people would contribute. Go check out books.digitaltalking.com there's still. I still need to add, it's only UK books at the moment. We don't have the Houghton Mifflin stuff yet, but all the HarperCollins and Unwin stuff is there. Still need to do a couple of volumes of History, Middle Earth and certain editions of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but everything else should be there with all the details of all the different covers that are available, all the ICEBNs, all the different impression numbers. One of the things we're trying to do is get a sense of exactly what impress were done of each cover and each ice bin and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

When they would change.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. And people can contribute by going and looking to see what editions were missing impression information on.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, I've just bookmarked that site and I'm going to see if I can contribute any information from my library.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So there's a. There's a page on there about what the open. It's titled Open Impression Groups and that's cases where we were sort of not sure how long a particular cover went for. Did it go to the 18th impression or did it stop at the 16th impression? When did that switch over happen? And that page lists all the sort of open questions we have. And one of the ways that people can contribute, they can go to their collection, they can look and say, oh, I've got that cover. Let me check what impression I have. Oh, it's an impression that they don't have. They don't have. And so we have a. There's a Google form you can fill out to submit. Take a photo of the COVID of the book and the copyright page and fill out the form and it'll help us fill that out. So I'm hoping this will be a really helpful resource for collectors and other people. And I'm hoping to work closely with the Tolkien collectors guide as well, or I guess Tolkien guide as they are now sort of rebranding themselves. I know they're planning on doing a bunch of stuff around collectors as well. They already have the guide to the letters, the guide to the calendars.

[Alan Sisto]

Those are so helpful.

[James Tauber]

And I know they're working on a guide to the books as well. I'm hoping to integrate with.

[Alan Sisto]

With that makes sense.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

So that is so cool. I'm just excited that all of this is going to be available in. I'm a very left brain person, so I like to structure things as well. I just don't have any experience building data models, so I wouldn't know the first thing to building something like this, but I sure know that I'm going to use it.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. One of the, one of the interesting challenges about this is that the, the needs of, of librarians on the one hand, collectors on the other hand are very different. And so there hasn't really been. I did a lot of research into what was in terms of bibliographic modeling and there's a lot of stuff that's catered to one group and not the other. So librarians have largely solved this problem for how they want to manage their book catalogs and so on. Yeah, but that's coming from a very different angle than a collector is. So they don't care about different covers. When they, when a library says we've got a copy of the Silmarillion, they might care whether what edition it is.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

They might care whether it's illustrated or not, whether it's paperback or hardback, but they don't care whether it's a 17th impression or an 18th impression or that kind of stuff. And so a lot of their models don't. A lot of the data models that librarians use don't cover that sort of stuff. And so I had to take what the Librarians use and expand it in ways to cover all these other things that they wanted to support.

[Alan Sisto]

That is just fascinating. One of the other big tasks that you and your team have been working on is annotations. I know we've talked about annotations before, before about who says what, but right now you're working more about. On things like what characters are present in each paragraph, where they're located, what day it is, even what time of day it is. And oftentimes there are going to be layers to this. Things like Gandalf telling a story at the Council. So that's Gandalf and the members of the Council are present, but he's relating a story that's about other characters talking to each other in another place in time. Very complex. How's that part of the project going right now?

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So again, this is. This is one of those things that, you know, people have done before at a very high level. And you can, I'm sure many, many of the listeners have seen diagrams of, you know, where each of the members of the Fellowship is at a particular point in time and what's. And even things like what's happening on this day and so on. And that information is all wonderful, but it's typically not tied in a precise way to the exact paragraphs in the text. And it's not possible to say what is the supporting evidence for saying this is happening on this date and so on. Because it might be coming from the Tale of Years, it might be coming from some calculation that you had to do because the text said two weeks later or three days ago or whatever. And you have to kind of do that calculation. Plus, there's also. When you're trying to study a particular character, that distinction between when a character is there versus merely being talked about can be important. So, you know, when you. When you're studying, are we always getting Frodo's point of view? For example, are we following Frodo? That might be a hypothesis that you have about the. The way the story's narrated. You can't just search for the word Frodo because people could just be talking about Frodo or even the narrator might be referencing Frodo, but he's not there. And so one of the things we started a few years ago was the laborious task of going through every single paragraph in. In Lord of the Rings and working out what characters are present, what location is that paragraph taking place in and what date it is, what time of Day it is. I built an annotation platform that a bunch of us have been using, and I want to give a special shout out to Robin Propst, Ken Herndon and Lisa Tricher, who have been doing the bulk of the work, the last couple of years of going through and annotating the characters and the locations. Tyler Hilgendorf has been doing a lot of the timeline stuff recently and really establishing exactly what day each particular paragraph is happening, what particular day that the text is referring to. So we've been working on this annotation project for a couple of years. One of the challenges has been that none of that information has been publicly available yet.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

And so for people listening, the people listening live, this isn't true yet, but people listening to the published episode. On the 25th of March, Talking Reading Day, I launched yet another site, annotations.digitaltalking.com which will be the beginnings of the publication of this annotation data. So it'll include some older stuff that we'd previously, a bunch of us had previously done around speaker identification, who's doing the talking when, but over time, it will include all this rich information that Robin, Ken and Lisa and Tyler have been working on, as well as other annotations that we do. And we'll have some articles there as well about some of the fun challenges. Like, one of the things that we hit, I'll just mention, is do we track things like horses? And so this is actually something that we've done.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, you got to at least track Bill the Pony.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. But there's others as well.

[Alan Sisto]

But, yeah, do you track Fatty Lumpkin? Do you track. Exactly.

[James Tauber]

And even the Nazgul and so on. There's stuff like that. So we'll have some articles on the site about, you know, interesting challenges to do with that, as well as the raw data that other people can use,

[Alan Sisto]

including the Nazgul steed that gets shot out from under him, because then you got to get his replacement and track that one. Now, you and I have chatted about your appearance on future seasons because we want to have you back for the Fall of Gondolin. Whenever I get around to that in the next couple of seasons. And it turns out we're going to have to work a bit harder at scheduling. You've been very flexible and you're always like, whatever time, whatever day, it always works. But that's not going to be the case going forward because on top of the digital Tolkien project and all the other work you're doing in the Tolkien fandom, You're going back for your PhD. Tell us your plans for that and how it's connected to your passion for Tolkien in his work.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So some of you may be aware that back in 2023. 2022, 2023. Get the right number of 20s there. I did. I went back and did a master's degree in corpus linguistics. And my dissertation, which I talked about@oxenmut 2023, was about sort of quantitatively studying Tolkien's writing style. And that included things like when we say that the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion are written in a different style, what do we actually mean linguistically?

[Alan Sisto]

That's fair. That's good. To be able to identify what it is that makes it different.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And the same thing for, you know, elves talk differently to Hobbits. But how do we actually quantify that? Talk about that.

[Alan Sisto]

Linguistic things like the frequency of contractions and. Yeah, those sorts of details.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Exactly those sorts of details. And the proportion of different function words and all sorts of these. All sorts of different techniques. And I briefly touched on that in my master's dissertation, but it raised more questions than it answered as to this kind of technique. And so I'm headed off to Germany to do my PhD and my. My thesis will be on sort of an expanded version of those. Those topics. So how. How we quantitatively study how language is used in. In narrative fiction and in. In Tolkien in particular, and how how it differs between different. Not only differs between different texts, but different parts of the text. So how does Tolkien's language change throughout the Hobbit? Or how does it differ in Lord of the Rings when he's talking about battles versus descriptions of scenery versus dialogue between people and so on? So really getting a handle on the linguistics of that.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's going to be fascinating.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, so that'll be a lot of fun. And obviously ties in directly with the Digital Tolkien project. So much of the infrastructure that we're building at the Digital Tolkien Project will, you know, it's designed to aid in scholarship, including my own Scholarship in IPHC.

[Alan Sisto]

Crowdsourcing your PhD. I like that.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, folks, we will be including some of the links to the Digital Tolkien project in the show notes for this episode. Please be sure to check that out. And if you're interested in contributing, I know that James would appreciate that as well. Before we get going into the actual chapter discussion, James, I just want to say that this run has been fantastic through Tal Omar and the history of Gladriel. And Kettleborn, it's just been, as always,

[James Tauber]

a lot of fun pleasure to work with you.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to falling Gondolin with you. I mean, I have no idea what. I kind of get the feeling that that' to be the third of the three great tales that we cover for. I'm still working out whether Baron and Luthien should come before Children of Hurrah and or vice versa based on publication versus chronology. But I'll tell you, I'm looking forward to it whenever that comes, whether that's two seasons from now or three seasons from now. If I do one a year or if I do three over two years. I'm not sure how it's going to work out, but I'm looking forward to it. Dr. Dr. Tomer.

[James Tauber]

Well, maybe not, but still might take me a little longer than that. But what I was going to say is I'm hoping that some of these resources, including Home based, will be particularly helpful in preparing for those episodes.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, I bet it will.

[James Tauber]

It's an extra motivation for me.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm realizing I might have to go back to school or Rings of Power wrap up is going to be interesting. This is ordinary bachelor's degree holding Allen, but with Dr. Sarah Brown and Dr. James Tauber analyzing the rings of power in season four or five. Yeah, well, I don't think a JD counts, but it is still a doctor.

[James Tauber]

Sure it does. I know somebody with a JD who refers to themselves as doctor.

[Alan Sisto]

Really? I will not be doing that. But good for them. Good for them. All right, well, let's go ahead and get into this discussion, folks. We are looking at the last three appendices to the history of Galadriel and Celeborn. We've been in this chapter for five episodes so far. This is our sixth and final one. And James, if you would start us off with Appendix C. Although it's funny,

[James Tauber]

I realize that the malbag question is going to touch on this, but where the stress is on celebrant. Is it celebrant or celebrant? Oh, I'm going to say celebrant.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, but it might be celebrant.

[James Tauber]

The mailbag question. We can discuss that in more detail.

[Alan Sisto]

I guess in the technical sense it should be right because you got the B and the R. You got the dual.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, but there's some issues we'll get to that in the mailbag question, and

[Alan Sisto]

that would be harder to change for me than Nargothrond actually. Celebrant. All right, fire away. Sir.

[James Tauber]

The River Celebrant, Silverload was within the borders of the realm of Lorien and the effective bounds of the kingdom of Gondor. In the north west of Anduin was the River Limlight. The whole of the grasslands between Silverlode and Limlight, into which the woods of Lorien formerly extended further south, were known in Lorien as Path Celibrant, that is, the field or enclosed grassland of Silverlode, and regarded as part of its realm, though not inhabited by its Elvish folk beyond the eaves of the woods. In later days, Gondor built a bridge over the upper Limelight and often occupied the narrow land between the Lower Limelight and Anduin as part of its eastern defences. Since the great loops of the Anduin, where it came down swiftly past Lorien and entered low flatlands before its descent again into the chasm of the Imin Mul, had many shallows and wide shoals over which a determined and well equipped enemy could force a crossing by rafts or pontoons, especially in the two westward bends known as the north and South Undeeps. It was to this land that the name Path Celebrant was applied in Gondor, hence its use in defining the ancient northern boundary. In the time of the War of the Ring, when all the land north of the White Mountains, save Anorien, as far as the Limelight, had become part of the kingdom of Rohan, the name Path Field of Celebrant was only used of the great battle in which Aeol the young destroyed the invaders of Gondor. And at this point Christopher briefly interjects in another essay, my father noted that whereas east and west the land of Lorien was bounded by Anduin and by the mountains, and he says nothing about any extension of the realm of Lorien across the Anduin, it had no clearly defined borders northward and southward. Then we return to Tolkien's words of old. The Galadhrim had claimed to govern the woods as far as the falls in the Silverlode where Frodo was bathed. Southward, it had extended far beyond the Silverlode into more open woodland of smaller trees that merged into Farangorn Forest, though the heart of the realm had always been in the angle between Silverload and Anduin where Qaras Galadhon stood. There was no visible borders between Lorien and Fangorn, but neither the Ents nor Le Galadhrim ever passed them. For legend reported that Fangorn himself had met the king of the Galadrim in ancient days. And Fangorn had said, I know mine and you Know yours. Let neither side molest what is the other's. But if an Elf should wish to walk in my land for his pleasure, he will be welcome. And if an Ent should be seen in your land, fear no evil. Long years had passed, however, since Ent or Elf had set foot in the other land.

[Alan Sisto]

So we skipped reading the first paragraph, which is Christopher's introduction to Appendix C. And apparently this appendix is a fix to an error in Appendix A. 14. That's the part about Gondor in the Lord of the Rings. That's where we read about the summit of Gondor's power, which took place back around third age 1100, when the borders of Gondor are said to have extended northwards to Celebrant and the southern eaves of Mirkwood.

[James Tauber]

Now, Christopher says that the professor repeatedly said this was a mistake and that it should have read not to celebrant, but to the field of Celebrant.

[Alan Sisto]

Aha.

[James Tauber]

Then he proceeds to provide what Tolkien wrote about this, sourcing it from late writing on the interrelations of the languages of Middle Earth.

[Alan Sisto]

Another late philological essay, surprise, surprise, is that it sounds almost like he's talking about of Dwarves and men, but I couldn't find it. Do we know what writing this is?

[James Tauber]

I wasn't able to find it either. And again, this is. This is exactly the sort of thing it could be quite frustrating, as we've seen with Unfinished Tales, that Christopher had not yet really established his means of referencing these things.

[Alan Sisto]

He hadn't developed a data model.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Don't worry, Christopher, we're working on it.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. I love that.

[James Tauber]

We started reading with the professor's words where he begins to lay out a clearer picture of the boundaries of Lorien. And that's where we learn that the celebrant isn't the border between Gondor and Lorien like the appendices suggest.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. In fact, the celebrant is actually fully within the borders of Lorien, which makes the river Limblight the border with Gondor. And if you look at a map of Middle Earth, your books or online, you'll see that both rivers are tributaries of the Anduin and that they flow generally to the east from the Misty Mountains. Sort of slightly southeast, but mostly east.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. But the Silverlode Celebrant is quite a bit to the north of the Limb Light and it runs through the woods

[Alan Sisto]

of Lorien, whereas the Limblight actually runs through the northern part of Fangorn Forest before coming out into grasslands and Reaching the Anduin near the undeeps and those grasslands, they're still part of the kingdom of Lorien, as Christopher explains in this appendix, even though it's not part of the forest. And that region is Parth Celebrant. Parth being a word, of course, for field or enclosed grassland or sward. Like Parth Galen. Mm.

[James Tauber]

Yep. But we're told no Elves live outside the forest itself. So path Celebrant is, well, uninhabited by the Elves, at least.

[Alan Sisto]

And that's the interesting part. Like, okay, it's the Elves Land, but the Elves don't live there. Right, okay.

[James Tauber]

And while it isn't a part of Gondor, they.

[Alan Sisto]

The Gondorians.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, the Gondorians built a bridge over limelight closer to its actual source and actually stationed soldiers there in the wedge of land between the north of the limelight, east of the Anduin.

[Alan Sisto]

It doesn't explicitly say one way or the other. I've got to wonder whether there was some sort of communication or official understanding or agreement. I mean, not necessarily a treaty or anything, but some sort of, hey, we're going to build a bridge here. Is that okay? Do we.

[James Tauber]

Are we allowed to station forces here, this place?

[Alan Sisto]

Right. I mean, that's a pretty significant thing, to station military forces within the land of another realm.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Gondor certainly needed some small force, or at least scouts in the region in order to protect against other crossings of the Undeeps by folks from the East Easterlings, Wainriders, the Balcoth, and so on. And this is why Tolkien explains the ancient northern boundary of Gondor is identified as such in the appendices.

[Alan Sisto]

And that makes sense. I mean, while the field of Celebrant doesn't belong to Gondor, they use it as a defense. By the way, by the time of the Lord of the Rings, the name of this part of Lorien, Parth Celebrant, was no longer actually used to describe the land, just the battle when the Eotheod, led by Eorl the young, came to Gondor's aid in this very place about 500 years prior to.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, it's another nice little philological touch there, this idea, because it happens in the real world, that things get associated, even though they're in the name of a place, they get associated with the event that happens there. And that kind of semantic shift is a nice little. It is interesting, realistic touch.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, very much so.

[James Tauber]

And then we return to Christopher's discussion of the boundaries of Lorien with him Quoting another essay, and we don't.

[Alan Sisto]

I was gonna say, do we know which one this is? No. No. That's what I was afraid of. Well, in that essay, Tolkien defines the eastern border of Lorien as the Anduin and the western border as the Misty Mountains. Okay. Logical geographic borders make sense. There's no mention of Lorien extending into Mirkwood, which is an idea that popped up once or twice in other writings discussed in this chapter. Remember, I think in Amroth and Nimrodil we talked about that, and I think even in the Elessar, because Gandalf is said to have met with her in Mirkwood.

[James Tauber]

The eaves of Mirkwood. Yeah. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It's odd.

[James Tauber]

And in this essay, while the east and west borders are defined, the north and south borders remain unclear.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Now we finish Appendix C with Tolkien's words from whatever essay Christopher is referencing here. The text doesn't really mention any northern boundary. It can't be the falls in the Silver Lode, as most of Lorien is north of the Silver Lode, so that it seems that to be maybe the western border, closer to the mountains. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, the Silverlode, if you talk about the Silverlode being a border, because the text just says they claim the land all the way up to the Falls of Silverlode, and I think they mean up there, not in a north sense, but in a towards the mountains sense.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a much more, I think, common way of talking about up and down in. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Is more of altitude rather than north. South. Yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

I mean, you get that even in when people talk about, you know, the Low Countries or even even High German versus Low German.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

You know, is. Is has to do with the mountain with status or anything like that.

[Alan Sisto]

No, clearly not. Yeah, that's. That's a very good point. And it still makes you wonder, though, where is the northern boundary? We don't have any clue. As for the southern boundary, we're told that it goes far beyond the Kelly Branch into the more open lands that approach Fangorn. However, the main portion of Lorien was the part between Celebrant and the Anduin, that sort of triangle of land.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And back to this idea of the southern border being somewhere near that of Fangorn Forest. Tolkien explains that there isn't a visible border between the two.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But that no Ent or Galadhrim crossed into the realm of the other. And Tolkien provides the backstory for this. Whoever the king of the Galadhrim was back in the day Amroth, Amdir, Malgalad, or someone else entirely unknown Malgalad makes an appearance, he'd apparently met up with Treebeard himself.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, the old. It had some words. Your land is your land. My land is my land.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

From the Redwood Forest to the. Sorry, I can't remember the lyrics to that song. Do you remember that this Land is mild.

[James Tauber]

No, I know this. I know the song.

[Alan Sisto]

From the Redwood Forest to the. The New York Islands. That's what it is. But I doubt the New York Islands or the Redwood Forests are anywhere near either of these kingdoms. No, look, you know what yours is and I know what mine is. Let's keep it that way. But we can safely walk in each other's realms. Like, we're not going to kill any elves that wander into Fangorn. And please don't chop us for firewood if we show up in Lorien. It actually makes me think of the legal principle in some European countries. It's mostly the Nordic nations that allows people governmentally, like, statutorily, the right to walk, hike, or even camp on people's private property. I think it's called Alamans Rotten in Sweden, for instance. And it means literally, all man's right or the public right. And it's a fascinating idea that you can just wander wherever you want and sleep, you know, put up a tent on somebody's land. You just have to stay away from gardens, cultivated lands, you know, you can't, like, pop up in their front yard.

[James Tauber]

Right, Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. I can see Ents now camping in Lorien, and Elves taking a stroll through Fangorn. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Of course, with the Entwives long gone, cultivated land and gardens would actually be hard to find in Fangorn.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a good point. None of it's cultivated anymore.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you actually do it. The text concludes with a statement that long years had passed since either Ent or Elf had gone into the land belonging to the other.

[Alan Sisto]

I wonder why that is. Why? I mean, it does seem sort of like Lorien is a little bit. I'm not gonna say isolationist, but they don't seem to go anywhere. It's not like they're sending people out to do anything, even gather intelligence, which is a little surprising.

[James Tauber]

I don't know. That isolation, that might not surprise. It's actually a bad word. It might be the right word.

[Alan Sisto]

It might be the right word. Fangor certainly is.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, you know, they don't. They don't want to go anywhere. Except for looking for the Entwives.

[James Tauber]

Right, exactly, exactly. So that's Appendix C. Then we get to a longer one, Appendix D, which is on a completely different topic.

[Alan Sisto]

Totally different topic. Totally unrelated. Just like Appendix E is unrelated to either C or D. Exactly. We apologize for the fragmentary nature of this episode.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. And this one ties back, in many respects more to the Eldarion and Arendus story.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, it really does. I think we leaned on it a lot during that. During that run.

[James Tauber]

So, Alan, would you like to take it away with the Lon Dyer appendix?

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed. And we're going to actually have to cut this one into, I think, two or three portions to get through it, so.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And we start with Christopher's introduction to Appendix D. It was told in Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn that in the war against Sauron and Eriador at the end of the 17th century of the Second Age, the Numenorean Admiral Kirjatur put a strong force ashore at the mouth of the Gwathlo, where there was a small Numenorean harbor. This seems to be the first reference to that port of which a good deal is told in later writings. The fullest account is in the philological essay concerning the names of rivers, which has already been cited in connection with the legend of Amroth and Nimrodel. In this essay, the name Gwathlo is discussed as follows. And now we go to the professor's writings, of course, which can also be found, as Christopher suggests, in the rivers and beacon hills of Gondor, found in full in the nature of Middle Earth. The river Gwaflo is translated grey flood, but Gwath is a Sindarin word for shadow, in the sense of dim light owing to cloud or mist, or in deep valleys. This does not seem to fit the geography. The wide lands divided by the Guaflo into the regions called by the Numenoreans Minhiriath. Between the rivers and Enedwaith, Middle Folk were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mythaythel, the land was almost flat and the waters became sluggish, intended to spread into Fenland, but some hundred miles below Tharbad the slope increased. The Gwathlo, however, never became swift, and ships of smaller draft could without difficulty sail or be rowed as far as Tharbad. The origin of the name Gwathlo must be sought in history. In the time of the War of the Ring, the lands were still in places well wooded, especially in Minhiriath and in the southeast of Enedwaith. But most of the plains were grasslands. Since the great plague of the year 1636 of the third Age, Minhiriath had been almost entirely deserted, though a few secretive hunter folk lived in the woods in Enedwaith, the remnants of the Dunlendings lived in the east in the foothills of the Misty Mountains. And a fairly numerous but barbarous fisherfolk dwelt between the mouths of the Gwathlo and the Angren. But in the earlier days, at the time of the first explorations of the Numenoreans, the situation was quite different. Minhiriath and Enedwaith were occupied by vast and almost continuous forests, except in the central region of the Great Fens. The changes that followed were largely due to the operations of Tar Aldarien, the Mariner king, who formed a friendship and alliance with Gil Galad. Eldarion had a great hunger for timber, desiring to make Numenor into a great naval power. His felling of trees in Numenor had caused great dissensions in voyages down the coasts. He saw with wonder the great forests, and he chose the estuary of the Gwathlo for the site of a new haven entirely under Numenorean control. Gondor, of course, did not yet exist. There he began great works that continued to be extended after his days. This entry into Eriador later proved of great importance in the war against Sauron, Second Age, 1693-1701. But it was in origin a timber port and shipbuilding harbor. The native people were fairly numerous and warlike, but they were forest dwellers, scattered communities without central leadership. They were in awe of the Numenoreans, but they did not become hostile until the tree felling became devastating. Then they attacked and ambushed the Numenoreans when they could, and the Numenoreans treated them as enemies and became ruthless in their fellings, giving no thought to husbandry or replanting. The fellings had at first been along both banks of the Gwathlo and timber had been floated down to the Haven Londire. But now the Numenoreans drove great tracks and roads into the forests northwards and southwards from the Guadhal, and the native folk that survived fled from Minhiriath into the dark woods of the great Cape of Erenvorn, south of the mouth of the Baranduin, which they dared not cross even if they could for fear of the elven folk. From Enedwaith they took refuge in the eastern mountains, where afterwards was Dunlan. They did not cross the Isen, nor take refuge in the great promontory between Isen and Levnui that formed the north arm of the Bay of Belfalas, Ras Morthil, or Andrast, because of the Pukalmen.

[James Tauber]

So, as you mentioned, Appendix D is a long one. So we're going to break this up into three sections. Okay. This first section takes us through the initial Numenorean expansion. So let's get started. Now, admittedly, you and Sara talked about some of these things back during the episodes on Aldarian and Arendus, but focus mostly, of course, on Eldarion's role and talk a little bit about the. The later expansion. But today we're going to look at the context of the story of Galadriel and Celebon.

[Alan Sisto]

That makes sense. I mean, that's why Christopher includes this appendix as. As related to the history. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

If you're wondering why it's here. Yeah, right.

[Alan Sisto]

Why is this here? Right. And it's here because, as his commentary points out, it's because it's mentioned in the note concerning Galadriel and Celeborn, where we spent an episode and a half on that. It's also mentioned in the part where the Numenoreans showed up five years late when Kiryatur landed a big force at the mouth of the Gray Flood. In the text there, it's mentioned as a small Numenorean harbor. And it's something that Christopher tells us in his introduction, that it's the very first mention of this place.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So while we as readers have learned about this place before, particularly it's founding by Eldarion as Vignolande, this is the first reference to it chronologically in Tolkien's writings.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And that's sometimes a thing that I find hard to. Hard to kind of get my head around. Like, what do you mean? This is the first mention of this. I've been talking about this place for weeks.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Not surprisingly, the fullest account Christopher says is the one we find in the rivers and beacon hills of Gondor. Can I just say what an absolute find that essay was. And I'm so glad that Christopher referenced it so many times, but I'm also glad that we have it full.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It's so good. And it's, of course, under the portion of the essay discussing the name, because that's what this is all about. The name of the river Guathlo. And as so many wonderful explanations about Middle Earth begin, we start with a translation of a name. It's all etymology, isn't it?

[James Tauber]

It's funny, I think, about that often quoted phrase from Tolkien that it all started with a map or whatever the word is, which is clearly not true. But he said that. He said it started with a map. It would be far more accurate to say it started with a word, an etymology. He started with a word and then he started wondering about the etymology, and then he starts to think about how did it actually get that name, given what that word means.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And this. This essay in particular is filled with that.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, exactly. And it hinges on this. This. This. This thing that. This contradiction between the fact that Gwath is a Sindarin word for shadow.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

And it's one we see in a few other places. It's La, Knighted in Del Duwath, Deadly Nightshade, and in Thuring.

[Alan Sisto]

That's such a wild word.

[James Tauber]

Thuringwithil. Thuringwithil, which is, of course the woman of secret shadow. And it's in plural form in Ered Wetheren, the mountains of shadow.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And a lot of times it is lanaid without that leading gift.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, it does have the G in Thuringwethil, which is great. But you won't necessarily notice that, of course, because of the lenition. Anyway, Tolkien goes a bit further, explaining that Guath specifically means shadow in the sense of dim light owing to cloud or mist or in deep valleys. This isn't like the shadow of the Nazgul. Right. This isn't a psychological shadow. This is like a. An actual effect of the light. It's less light because of these reasons.

[James Tauber]

Although I wonder which came first. Did he shift his meaning to justify this?

[Alan Sisto]

That's a good one. I don't know. He does that kind of thing a lot. That's true. Speaking of other things that he does a lot, it's that there is a contradiction in the name. And a couple weeks ago we talked about the river Gilrein with the element Ran from Wanderer, like Mithrandir, Grey Wanderer, and how that name doesn't fit the river because it. It flows swiftly from its source in the White Mountains down to the bay.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Same here. We've got a name that doesn't fit the geography. So what's up?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, and he points out the lands on either side of the Gwathlo. I mean, Hiriath to the north, an Enedwaith or a Ned Wythe. We'll talk about that later on.

[Alan Sisto]

Don't make it harder on me. But you're right, it is. I'M sure it's supposed to be.

[James Tauber]

We'll get to that. There may be ways of saving our traditional pronunciation.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay.

[James Tauber]

But he points out they're mainly plains, open and mountainless.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. There's nothing there. It's just flat.

[James Tauber]

So flat that around the place where the Swan Fleet and the Hallwell Rivers meet, quote, the waters became sluggish and tended to spread into Finland.

[Alan Sisto]

And the Gwathlo is said to never become swift, even when the slope changes. And that, of course, allowed ships to sail directly up the river or be rowed up the river as far as the fords at Tharbad. But. But what about the name? And I love this. Tolkien says that while the name doesn't fit the river now, the answer must be salt in history.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Which is such a great inciting event for him to come up with history. I know.

[Alan Sisto]

And he's like, well, if I'm gonna have it sought in history, I guess I better come up with the history.

[James Tauber]

Come up with a history. Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, man.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And so by the time of Lord of the Rings, there might have been a few small forests, but most of this region is grassland. And it's also mostly uninhabited. Right. With the great plague 1400 years earlier wiping out most of the people who lived there.

[Alan Sisto]

We do get a mention of some secretive hunter folk that lived in the forests of Menhiriath, while in Enedwaith or Enedwaith, we have mention of two groups of folks. We have the remnants of the Dunlendings who live in the hills near the Misty Mountains, of course. But then we have what's described as a fairly numerous but barbarous fisherfolk that live in the coastal region between the Gray Flood and the Isen. Who do we think these fisher folk are? I mean, here's where I'm going with this, James. I think you probably already kind of figured this out.

[James Tauber]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

We've both landed on the Folk of the Hills of Agar. From our last reading, the tales of Tal Omar being from an area near the mouth of Morthon. But if it had been near the mouth of the Isen, could this be the descendants of the Folk of Agar?

[James Tauber]

Quite possibly.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, it sure seems like. Because don't we read about the King in the North? The North King, The Northern King. So that would be north, because the region between the Grave Flood and the Isen, the Isen's at the south end of that region. So if they're partnering up with the king up there to do whatever it is they do, Yep. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

One of those things we'll. We'll never know the answer to. But fun to. Fun to make that connection.

[Alan Sisto]

Fairly numerous, but barbarous fisher folk.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Why are fisher folk barbarous? I don't know. Interesting.

[James Tauber]

Unless he means. I mean, the origin of the term barbarian is. It's making fun of the way they talked the Greek. The Greek term barbarian. Barbarian refers to the fact that to a Greek speaker, it just sounded like they were saying, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, exactly.

[James Tauber]

And Tolkien would have known that. So I wonder if he. Yeah, it's a reference to they just talked funny.

[Alan Sisto]

It's not like there's a bunch of Conans, you know, running around.

[James Tauber]

Well, in the case of.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, that's true.

[James Tauber]

Maybe it is a bit of a maybe. Anyway, in an appendix to the battles of the Fords of Isen, we read something that might shed some light here. We're told that in those days the region was little peopled. In the marshlands of the mouth of Greyflood and Isen lived a few tribes of wildmen, fishers and Fowlers. But akin in race and speech to the Druedyne of the woods of Anorian.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, that's interesting. I mean, akin to the Druedyne is news to me. That doesn't sound, and certainly doesn't fit the folk of the hills of Agar. But the footnote to this part of the appendix does loop us back to the mention of these barbarous fisher folk, with Christopher adding this. No mention is made, speaking in our passage of any connection between these people and the Druedain, though the latter, the Druidain, are said to have dwelt and to have survived there into the Third Age in the promontory of Andrast, south of the mouths of Isis.

[James Tauber]

Hmm.

[Alan Sisto]

Connected to the Druidyne, but maybe not connected to the Druidyne. I mean, you'd think akin in race is one. Akin in speech is one thing, but to be akin in race. Druidyne are very distinctive looking.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, in terms of their height, in terms of just their physical appearance, their eyes, the fact that they grow almost no facial hair, just the little tuft that Khan Barihan had. Intriguing to think of them being kin.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

I don't know that. That. As for speech, that kind of fits. If I remember correctly, the Druedine would have probably had some language similar to that of the Haladin, because that was the group that they came with. Like they were connected to the House of Haleth. And we know that that was also the House or the kin. The kin of those people were the ones that became the Dunlendings.

[James Tauber]

Dunlendings, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And a lot of it had to do with the fact that they didn't speak the language of the House of Hodor and the House of Beor, the other Edain kin.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Alan Sisto]

It was interesting.

[James Tauber]

And speaking of the Dunlendings, in that same appendix, the Dunlending remnants are mentioned. In the foothills of the western side of the Misty Mountains live the remnants of the people that the Rohirrim later called the Dunlendings. A sullen folk akin to the ancient inhabitants of the White Mountain valleys, whom Isildur cursed.

[Alan Sisto]

So the men of the Mountain related to the Dunlendings. The Druedain connected, perhaps because of that connection with the kin of the House of Haleth, but not kin, just connected somehow.

[James Tauber]

Right, Yeah. I mean, you could be connected any number of ways. It could just be your own trade with one another or linguistically related, I mean. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

But certainly not of the same people group.

[James Tauber]

I don't know.

[Alan Sisto]

It's interesting. I mean, we've got these people in Minhiriath and Eneduith that we don't know enough about to really say anything, so we're just going to have to leave it at that. So all of that situation. Right. The empty lands, the very small groups of people that are living scattered through the regions. That's the way things are in third age 3019 here in this region, the time of the War of the Ring. But for this discussion, to learn about the reason why it's called the Gwathlo, we have to go back in time to the days of the first explorations of the Numenoreans. That would be beginning around second age 735.

[James Tauber]

Right. And that was the first of Eldarion's voyages that wasn't just a linden. And for details, let's go back to Eldarion and Arendus, where we read, not long after, another voyage he made that lasted for four years. For it is said that he was no longer content to sail to Mithlond, but began to explore the coasts southwards, past the mouths of Baronduin and Gwathlo and Angren. And he rounded the dark cape of Rasmorthil and beheld the great bay of Belfalas and the mountains of the country of Amroth, where the Nandor elves still dwell. So it might be a little later than 735, but not much. We know that Vignalande was founded between second age 750 and 800.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay. So somewhere around that very long time ago, certainly 5,000 years prior to the War of the Ring. So what was the land like then? And Tolkien explains that both Menhiriath and Enedwai were covered by a nearly solid forest. It was really only the fens near what would eventually be Thar Bad that weren't covered by trees. So how did we go from a part of the world covered, covered by dense forest to one that's nearly all simply grassland?

[James Tauber]

It reminds me of one of the better parts of the marketing that that Amazon did for the Rings of Power. The map reveal.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, I thought that was great. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

The first real hint that we got that it was going to be a Second Age show was when they released a map that had these forests. Yes. Much more widespread than in the Third Age maps. What we used to. That was the first sign, long before the Numenor map. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And I think even some of the names were like, the older.

[James Tauber]

The names were like that. But one of the. Really, the names got added incrementally. But one of the first things, that forest is still there and it's not there anymore. So that was an interesting, interesting touch.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

But anyway, according to Tolkien, the changes in the forest were mostly because of Eldarion, who's described here as having a great hunger for timber, desiring to make Numenor into a great naval power. One of the things that struck me when you read that passage about wanting to turn Numenor into a great naval power is where would he have got that? It strikes me as an odd thing. It's not like there was anyone else that was a great naval power.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Did anyone. Was there a naval force anywhere of any kind?

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, I'm assuming there were havens in Mithlond, so there were ships, but they were mostly ships to sail to Valador. They weren't.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

They weren't projecting power anyway.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I just thought that. I thought that was interesting that you would aspire to great naval power when there really weren't any navies at all.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Like, you don't have to be very great to be the greatest naval power in Middle Earth.

[James Tauber]

Right, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

My feeling, going back to having read Eldarion and Arendus and spending all those weeks there, is that he wanted very much to see Numenor be a great power. Period.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

But I think he knew that in order to be a power, when you're an island, you have to have the ability to project power through a naval force.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

And he was thinking that first, which is why you don't see him building, like, military bases and trying to build up, you know, an army on the shores of Middle Earth. He's starting with the navy because that's the only way that we're going to be able to move things and people like logistics and troops and things. When we were looking at Eldarion and Erendis shortly after they got married and after Ancalame was born, we read about something that Nuneth had said to Arindis previously. Ships he may love my daughter, for those are made by men's minds and hands. But I think it is not the winds or the great waters that so burn his heart, nor yet the sight of strange lands, but some heat in his mind or some dream that pursues him. That's where we get the text from the narration that says, it may be she struck near the truth. Aldarian was a man long sighted, and he looked forward to days when the people would need more room and greater wealth. And whether he himself knew this clearly or no, he dreamed of the glory of Numenor and the power of its kings. And he sought for footholds once they could step to wider dominion. So it was that ere long he turned from forestry to the building of ships, and a vision came to him of a mighty vessel like a castle, with tall masts and great sails, like clouds bearing men and stores enough for a town. Okay, so he very much sort of saw the use of naval power as the means to an end of the glory of Numenor. And it's why it was a problem. I mean, here's a guy who. We've talked about this in all of those episodes, one of his problems was just a total lack of contentment. And you don't want to criticize him completely for that because you want to be long sighted, you want to be thinking of the future of your people, but that, you know, did you take that a step too far? You know, and clearly here there's something about that.

[James Tauber]

For whatever reason, he ended up with a great hunger for timber. And I think we've got a good sense of why that is. But yeah, Toki notes that he's cutting down trees on the island was problematic. Right. It was bad enough that sometime between 750 and 800, Tar Meneldor set a curb on the felling of trees in Numenor for the building of vessels.

[Alan Sisto]

Sorry, son, you cannot cut trees anymore. We're running out of them. And that ban directly led to Aeldarian searching for trees elsewhere, again, having to have a navy to go do that. And it was during his Venturing that Eldarion saw something about the mouth of the Gwathlo that led him to choose it for the site of a new haven entirely under Numenorean control. And I thought that was another interesting phrase, because that's the first time in 800 years of Numenor that they wanted a place that was outside of Numenor, but entirely under their control.

[James Tauber]

They controlled. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And that's another sort of problematic step.

[James Tauber]

But it's interesting because that place, it was, you know, it was important in the war against Sauron, as we read in the concerning Galadriel and Celebon piece.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But it wasn't originally a military outpost. Right. It was a port for timber and a harbor to build ships.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Because again, building the navy is what he wanted to do. This is finally when we start to get a clue about the people in the area. They're said to be fairly numerous, and though they're described as warlike, I want to point out they're also an isolated community. So they don't really have any ability to really wage war. They don't have a central government or leadership, so that maybe they're combative, but they're not. They're not going to be able to stand up to a force like Numenor, which, you know, is going to be far mightier than anything that they could put together.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And, you know, they were in awe of these advanced people, in quotes, coming. Coming ashore and building a harbor. Right. They didn't show any. In any hostility. Right. Despite their warlike nature. Until after Tolkien says the tree felling became devastating.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow, that says something, doesn't it? The tree felling became devastating. This isn't. I think we talked about this in Eldari and horrendous. This response by the native peoples of these lands isn't about, oh, we really like the way these trees look, or even the broader concerns about, oh, this is environmental damage. I mean, we might be able to look at that with 21st century sensibilities and say deforestation is bad because of its effects on global climate or things like that.

[James Tauber]

Systemic issues.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. These people aren't worried about the systemic issues.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

They're worried about their way of life. Right. This supplies their building material, this supplies their food, probably their game. You destroy the forest, the animals flee somewhere. Now they don't have animals to kill for food. They don't have animals to kill for skins. Numitor is destroying their means of survival. So, you know, backed into a corner like that. Yeah. They attack the Numenoreans as much as they can. That of course, leads to retaliation and then ruthless tree felling, which is just. I can't help but hear Tolkien's own disapproval here when he says giving no thought to husbandry or replanting. Yeah, that's. That feels like damnation by Tolkien.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

Given his love for trees. But yeah, you know, the text saying ruthless is such a strong word because they'd started with just cutting along the riverbanks. Right. Makes sense. It's easier to transport things like that. But now that they have been attacked. Oh, we're going to do this. Right. So they start doing the full on deforestation driving roads north and south away from the river, taking as much of the timber as they possibly can. They're just going to take it all at this point.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. Which forces the people in the region to flee. Yeah, right. The ones to the north of the river in Minhiriya fled further north into the Cape to the south of the mouth of the Barranduan. We're told that even if they could cross that river, they wouldn't because they were afraid of the elves. Further north.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, again, connecting us back to Tal Omar, the elves are described in even more terrifying terms than the Fel folk, you know, the cruels of the north and quite possibly the. What was the word that they used about the getting the weapons from like the demons of fire in the mountains or something. And we thought, well, maybe that's the dwarves, but also maybe it's the elves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the meantime, the ones to the south, of course they're going to flee to someplace else. So they're south of the Gwathlo, they end up fleeing east towards what's eventually going to be called Dunland, towards the foothills of the Misty Mountains. They specifically don't go further south, they don't cross the Isen and end up going into the Peninsula Andrast because of the Puklemen. And we're going to be talking about that in more detail when Don Marshall and I get to the chapter on the Druedyne. In a couple of months time, It's time for a nice spring reset, freshen up the wardrobe and upgrade some everyday essentials with fewer but higher quality pieces. And that's just one of the reasons I keep coming back to Quince. Fabrics that feel upscale, elevated, fits that are both stylish and comfortable. And honestly, pricing that just makes sense. A 100% Pima Cotton luxury tee for 20 bucks? You bet. Now I've been telling you about Quince's clothes for a long time now and for good reason. Quince has the day to day pieces that I love built with quality that lasts. They got their high quality everyday essentials with premium fabrics like 100% European linen or their super soft flow knit activewear fabric. The linen pants and shirt are the perfect layers for spring. Breathable, lightweight, refined, but casual. In fact, my new linen shorts are my spring Go to casual but classy and really comfortable. But the best part really is the pricing, typically half or even less than similar brands. And it's because Quints partners directly with the best factories, ones that meet their high standards not just for craftsmanship but ethical production practices. And that cuts out the middleman. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quince.com pony for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Q U I n c e.com pony for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com pony hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. On the podcast I ask a great contest contemporary writer to select a favorite story from the magazine's almost hundred year

[James Tauber]

archive to read and discuss.

[Alan Sisto]

Together we delve into the story, exploring its themes, its style and what makes fiction work. You can listen to authors like Ottessa Moshfegh talk about why we write story or attaching a story or creating a story. Is this inclination that we all have to stop spinning? And you can hear writers like George Saunders discuss the nature of storytelling on the first read.

[James Tauber]

You accept these things as descriptions and they make you see the scene, but every line is a chance to inflect the reader's mind.

[Alan Sisto]

You'll discover new favorite authors and read old favorites in new ways. Episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast are released on the 1st of every month. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Now. Soon we'll get back to the devastation wrought by the Numenoreans. But before we do, I want to take a minute to thank the amazing community that has grown up around this show over the past 10 years. After all, there is a lot more talk going on at the Prancing Pony Podcast than just us.

[James Tauber]

The PPP really does have a warm and welcoming listener community. If you've got questions or just want to talk about how much you love Middle Earth. Be sure to check out our Common room on Facebook and across all social media. On Facebook, just look for the Prancing Pony podcast. Yeah, there's a page, but you're going to want to join the group for that great fan community now on every

[Alan Sisto]

social media platform other than Facebook. We are PrancingPonyPod and you can find our subreddit at R Prancingponypod. Please be sure to check out my Daily show, today's Tolkien times on YouTube and all your favorite podcast apps. Get your daily Middle Earth fix there with everything from Tolkien Tuesdays to Third Age Thursdays. Be sure to watch or listen at YouTube.com prancingponypod James would you continue for us in Appendix D the devastation wrought

[James Tauber]

by the Numidoreans was incalculable. For long years these lands were their chief source of timber, not only for their shipyards at Londya and elsewhere, but also for Numenor itself. Shiploads innumerable passed west over the sea. The denuding of the lands was increased during the war in Eriador, for the exiled natives welcomed Sauron and hoped for his victory over the men of the sea. Sauron knew of the importance these enemies of the Great Haven and its shipyards, and he used these haters of Numenor as spies and guides for his raiders. He had not enough force to spare for any assault upon the forts at the Haven or along the banks of the Gwathlo, but his raiders made much havoc on the fringe of the forests, setting fire in the woods and burning many of the great wood stores of the Numenoreans. When Sauron was at last defeated and driven east out of Eriador, most of the old forests had been destroyed. The Gwathlo flowed through a land that was far and wide on either bank a desert treeless but untilled. That was not so when it first received its name from the hardy explorers of Tar Aldarian ship, who ventured to pass up the river in small boats. As soon as the seaward region of salt airs and great winds was passed, the forest drew down to the river banks, and wide through the waters with the huge trees cast great shadows on the river, under which the boats of the adventurers crept silently up into the unknown land. So the first name they gave to it was river of Shadow, Gwathir, but later they penetrated northward as far as the beginning of the Great Fenlands, though it was still long before they had the need or sufficient men to undertake the great works of drainage and dyke building that made a great port on the site where Thabad stood. In the days of the two kingdoms, the Sindarin word that they used for the Fenland was lo earlier logga, from a stem log, meaning wet, soaked, swampy. And they thought at first that it was the source of the forest river, not yet knowing the Mephathel that came down out of the mountains in the north, and gathering the waters of the Bruinen, Loudwater and Glandwin, poured floodwaters into the plain. The name Gwathir was thus changed to Gwathlo, the shadowy river from the Fens. The Gwathlo was one of the few geographical names that became generally known to others than the mariners in Numenor and received an Adonaic translation. This was Agathurush.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, if you say so, James. Agathorush. Now we get the full picture of what the Numenoreans, beginning with Eldarion, but carrying all the way through Tarman, Astir and even later, have done to this region. And Tolkien does not mince words. What they have created is devastation, and the extent of the damage is incalculable.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, I mean, both extremely strong words.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, and denuding too, which I think we get to.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recall that Vignolande was established sometime between 750, 800 of the second age, and that TA minister's defeat of Sauron took place in second age 1700. So we're talking about a period of 900 years here.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that is a long time. And certainly, you know, it's for a civilization like the Numenoreans to deforest an entire region probably took them the better part of that millennium. But over that period of, not only did the forests on both sides of the Guathalo serve as their primary source of timber for the building of ships in Vignolande, they also served as the source of wood for Numenor itself, because once again, it's not a big place and they were needing more lumber to. Or more timber. I should say. I did have to go down the rabbit hole of timber versus lumber, because my brain kept trying to interchange the words. But timber is, of course, the raw material. The trees, the logs, and the lumber is the finished material. They're not going down to Home Depot to buy a bunch of two by fours. So it's timber, not lumber. Anyway, it only got worse during the war. And this is where, I don't know, maybe not driving away the people who Live there would have been the better choice, because you end up driving them right into Sauron's hands. But that's also where we get that another powerful word, the Denuding of them.

[James Tauber]

Yes, but because you've now made enemies, and those enemies will become allies of your other enemy.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if it's Sauron.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. You know, it's bad when people are pulling for Sauron to win because they think their lives will be better. I mean, they're wrong, of course, but. Well, yeah, who can blame them?

[Alan Sisto]

Well, yeah, they're looking at their own lives right now. Well, we've been driven out of our lands.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And Sauron knew how much these people hated Numenor.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah.

[James Tauber]

And the port of Inyland, So he used them to raid and spy setting fires and destroying timber stocks.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Now, eventually, in Second Age 1700, as we read in the note about the history of Gladiator and Celeborn, he is defeated and he retreats back to Mordor with just that bodyguard, like we talked about. But by this time, though, the damage is. It's incomprehensible. The river is described here. The area around the river is described as a treeless, untilled desert, which is in stark contrast to what it looked like 900 years before.

[James Tauber]

Yep, yep. But at this point, we come back to the etymological nature of this whole appendix, that it first got its name when the early explorers between 750 and 800 who went up the river from Vignalande. Right. Once they get inland a bit away from the winds and salt air, we're told the forest runs all the way down to the banks of the river. And even though the river was wide, the trees are huge, and so they cast great shadows. That's where we get the name.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, the great shadows. So the river was wide. Is it too hard to cross in the middle of the night? You're walking in your sleep. It just popped into my head. You know, we get the original name of the river here. Gwath. Hir or Gwathir, the River of Shadow. Not the river of dreams. Using. Using gwath, the Sindarin word for shadow. And Hir, which is the lunited form of sir river or stream, like Sirian or Ossiriand.

[James Tauber]

Yep. So I'll just take a moment to explain. We've used this term lenited a bunch of. That's true.

[Alan Sisto]

We should probably. I think we talked about it once or twice before, but not even in the last season or Two. So, yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

It's just this weakening of a sound. And so one of the ways that you can. That an S can get weakened to an H. You actually see that, by the way, if you look at. There are many cases where a word in, say, Greek will have an H, where the word in Latin will have an S. And that's an example where that lenition happened in Greek but didn't happen in Latin. So the word hyper, which comes from Greek, is actually originally the same word as super, which comes from Latin.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh.

[James Tauber]

But the S has been linited. So that's a common thing, that in certain languages, s has become Hs. And sometimes within a language, it can just happen contemporary contextually. And that's what often happens in these elvish languages, that in certain contexts, a consonant just weakens. It just becomes lenited. And. And one example of that is. Is GWT just becoming W. Another example is an S becoming an H. Oh, that is fascinating.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that.

[James Tauber]

But as they keep going up the river, they eventually reach the Fenlands near where Tharbard would eventually be built, and they couldn't go any further. So they thought the Fens were the source of the Gwathir.

[Alan Sisto]

And since the Sindarin word for the Fenland was lo, from that stem log, meaning wet or soaked or swampy, they changed the name from Gwathir to Gwathlo. Mm.

[James Tauber]

We also learned this river was known enough by the people of Numenor, not just the sailors who visited Vignalonde, that it received an Adonaic name, Agathurush. One of the few Adonaic words we get.

[Alan Sisto]

And also another one of those words that almost sounds like a pharmaceutical. Ask your doctor if Agathurush is right for you. Side effects involve deforestation, denuding.

[James Tauber]

I was going more with some strange substance that you might ingest in the forests of.

[Alan Sisto]

Like something you find at the base of a tree. Like a mushroom.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. And have the Agathurush. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Good stuff.

[James Tauber]

Okay, well. Well, let's continue now with the third and final part of Appendix D. Alan, would you take it away?

[Alan Sisto]

Let's do that. But from then onwards, the region fell quickly into decay, and long before the time of the Lord of the Rings had gone back into wild fenlands. When Boromir made his great journey from Gondor to Rivendell. The courage and hardihood required is not fully recognized in the narrative. The North South Road no longer existed, except for the crumbling remains of the causeways, by which a hazardous approach to Tharbed might be achieved only to find ruins on dwindling mounds and a dangerous ford formed by the ruins of the bridge, impassable if the river had not been there, slow and shallow but wide. If the name Glanduin was remembered at all, it would only be in Rivendell, and it would apply only to the upper course of the river, where it still ran swiftly, soon to be lost in the plains and disappear in the Fens, a network of swamps, pools, and eyots where the only inhabitants were hosts of swans and many other water birds. If the river had any name, it was in the language of the Dunlendings in the Return of the King. It is called the Swanfleet river, not river with a capital R, simply as being the river that went down into Nyn in Elf the Waterlands of the Swans. And then Christopher's following commentary here closes out Appendix D. It was my father's intention to enter in a revised map of the Lord of the Rings Glanduin as the name of the upper course of the river, and to mark the Fens as such with the name Nyn in Elf or Swan Fleet. In the event his intention came to be misunderstood, for on Pauline Bane's map the lower course is marked as R Swanfleet, while on the map in the book, as noted above, the names are placed against the wrong river. It may be noted that Tharbad is referred to as a ruined town in the Fellowship of the Ring, and that Boromir and Lothlorien told that he lost his horse at Tharbad at the fording of the Grey Flood. In the Tale of Years, the Ruining and Desertion of Tharbad is dated to the year 2912 TA when great floods devastated Enedwaith and Menhiriath. From these discussions it can be seen that the conception of the Numenorean harbor at the mouth of the Guadhal had been expanded since the time when Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn was written from a small Numenorean harbor to Londire the Great Haven. It is of course the Vignalonde or New Haven of Aldarian and Arundus, though that name does not appear in the discussions just cited. It is said in Aldarian and Arendus that the works that Aldarion began again at Vignalande after he became king were never completed. This probably means no more than that they were never completed by him, for the later history of Londire presupposes that the Haven was at length restored and made secure from the assaults of the Sea. And indeed, the same passage in Aldarian. And Arendus goes on to say that Aldarion laid the foundation for the achievement of Tar Minastir long years after in the first war with Sauron. And but for his works, the fleets of Numenor could not have brought their power in time to the right place, as he foresaw. Quick aside, what do you mean in time? It was still five years late. Anyway, continuing with Christopher's words, the very last paragraph of Appendix D, the statement in the discussion of Glanduin above that the port was called Londire Ened, the great Middle Haven, as being between the havens of Lindon in the north and Pelargir on the Anduin, must refer to a long time after the Numenorean intervention in the war against Sauron and Eriador. For according to the tale of Years, Pelargir was not built until the year 2350 of the Second Age and became the chief haven of the faithful Numenoreans.

[James Tauber]

We said this appendix was long.

[Alan Sisto]

We did indeed, yes.

[James Tauber]

And we had to skip a bit, including the beginning of the discussion of the name of the river Glanduin, which originates in that long essay that we've talked about so much that's published as the Rivers and Beacon Hills of Gondor. In the of Name Nature of Middle Earth, Tolkien explained that the name means border, river Glan meaning boundary, and the familiar Duin meaning large river like Anduin.

[Alan Sisto]

And it had been given this name because it was the border of Eregion separating it from Enedwaith, which means Middle Folk. But even though this Middle land didn't belong to either Arnor or Gondor, and it didn't have any permanent settlements of the Dunedain, that north south road that went through there was the primary means of communication between the two kingdoms. So the road had to be maintained in this region, specifically from the fords of Isen to Tharbad.

[James Tauber]

And still in the part we skipped, we learned that until the great plague of Third Age 1636, both kingdoms built and maintained the bridge of Tharbad and the long causeways that carried the road to it on either side of the river.

[Alan Sisto]

That is well right. And in fact, we get an interesting footnote to this passage that is worth looking at in full, even if we skip the passage itself that contained the footnote. In the early days of the kingdoms, the most expeditious route from one to the other, except for great armaments, was found to be by sea to the ancient port at the head of the estuary of the Gwathlo and so to the river port of Tharbad and thence by the road. Now, here's the thing that. I've got a question for you, James. I want your thoughts on this. Is that both, or is that just north to south or south to north? I mean, if I'm sending troops from Gondor to Arnor what do they mean? Does it mean that I should go out Pelargir and through the Bay of Belfalas and around the Cape of Andrast to the head of the estuary and up to Tharabad and thence by the road to the north? Or do they mean.

[James Tauber]

I think so, the other way around,

[Alan Sisto]

where you take the road to Tharbad and it's basically, you would go by sea from Arnor to Tharbad and then by the road down to Gondor. Like, which leg is the sea leg and which leg is the road leg? I'm not sure that's the problem.

[James Tauber]

I'd assumed a southern part of it, but. Yeah, northern part. Well, though, in the northern part, you're saying go from Mithlond.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. It would have to be for Miflond by sea. Oh, but yeah, you're right. That wouldn't be in their realm. So it must be. The southern portion is by sea. So if you wanted to go from Arnor to Gondor again, except by great armaments you would take the road to Tharbad and then out to the mouth of Gwathlo and down around the cape into Belfalas and then up polar gear. Interesting. That's such a long way to go that you wonder, why is it so much more difficult to just continue down that road through what is now known as Dunland, but through that area and then through Calenardon or Rohan.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Until you get to Minas Tirith. It feels like that's a lot shorter than to go all the way down the river all the way down past the Cape of Andrast back up and around into the Bay of Belfalas across over to the mouths of the Anduin and up to Pelargir and then to Minas Tirith. I don't know.

[James Tauber]

It's interesting that it qualifies. In the early days of the kingdoms, the most expeditious route. Route.

[Alan Sisto]

I wonder if it's just because later on they just didn't do a lot of traveling.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, maybe. Although it does suggest that. But it was only the most expeditious

[Alan Sisto]

route for a long period of time. Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if maybe the road wasn't fully developed until later. It took a little while to finish the road. We don't know. But it's an interesting thing. I'm always interested in things like logistics, like how did they get troops and messages and things. I mean, some messages could be communicated by the Palantiri and that would have been the main way for the leaders to communicate.

[James Tauber]

But.

[Alan Sisto]

But you know, not everything can be sent that way. And you know, certainly we don't have two day delivery by Amazon here. So how do we get. How do we get stuff?

[James Tauber]

But anyway, missed product placement opportunity in Rings of Power to have Amazon deliver.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah. Oh, they really should. Absolutely. You could have had.

[James Tauber]

No, they should know.

[Alan Sisto]

I know, I'm being, I'm being facetious. Can you imagine, instead of, instead of casting the rings or forging the rings, which he should have forged them, not cast them. But if Celebr had forged the rings instead of that, if they just showed up in an Amazon package, a little bubble wrap and just, hey, look at what came in today. You know what, you could even do, like full product placement. You could have. Alexa could blink and be like, alexa, do I have a notification?

[James Tauber]

Well, that would replace the Palantiri.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true.

[James Tauber]

A bunch of Alexa.

[Alan Sisto]

And then the Palantir could then speak back and say, your package has arrived containing three rings. And then he goes to the door and of course he checks his ring camera first to make sure he checks his ring camera, which is ironically named. Oh my gosh. All right, that's terrible. Okay, anyway, anyway, please, the footnote continues.

[James Tauber]

The ancient seaport and its great keys were ruinous, but with long labor. A port capable of receiving sea going vessels had been made at Tharpad, with a fort raised there on the great earthworks on both sides of the river to guard the once famed bridge of Tharbad.

[Alan Sisto]

The once famed. So it's already no longer famed, Right, Right. Maybe because it no longer is.

[James Tauber]

This sort of feels very like Ozymandias, right? It's kind of like, oh, the once famed bridge of Tharber. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

The guy that. We don't even know who he was or anything about him. Well, obviously we're talking here about early third age and it's already ruinous. That's why it's the once famed Bridge of Tharbad. It might be the now famed ruins of Tharbad, but it was the once famed bridge.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, and now the footnote gives us more about its past. The ancient port was one of the earliest Ports of the Numenoreans, begun by the renowned mariner king Tah Aldarian, and later enlarged and fortified. It was called Lon Dire Enev, the Great Middle Haven, as being between Lindon in the north and Pelagir on the Anduin. And there'll be more on this idea of the Middle Haven at the end. But I like the way this sort of spells out. These are the three big.

[Alan Sisto]

Put this on a. On a much bigger scale if we're. If we're putting us at the same tier as Lindon and Pilar Gear.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a big place.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And an important place also. Just some linguistics there. I mean, Eneth. Right. We talked about Enedwaith.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

I said eneth Wythe. But that's. Again, that. Because there's a lenition there where it goes from Enev, Middle to Ened. Right, because you drop that. That and Edwaith. Nobody's gonna say that except for me when I'm trying to sound like a complete idiot. So, anyway, back to the text here. We're told that both kingdoms, presumably Gondor and Arnor, kept a force of soldiers, sailors and engineers there all the way up until the time of the Great plague in the 17th century. Then, picking up where we read after the plague, the entire area just fell apart. It became wild Fenlands again long before the time of the Lord of the Rings.

[James Tauber]

And we're told that Boromir's efforts were more significant than the story in the Council of Error might have led us to believe. Right. Courage and hardihood not fully recognized.

[Alan Sisto]

That's something I really. I mean, it sounds like it. This is quite a task to get across the river at Tharbad. I mean, these are ruins. There's nothing left. You're gonna ford the river on foot?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. And I like the way that Tolkien's kind of suggesting you have no idea. You read it in the Council of Elrond. You have no idea just how tough it was.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, that's right. This is really tough. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. The road basically didn't exist except for crumbling remains. We're told the ford would be dangerous due to the bridge being just ruins at this point. So no wonder Boromir lost his horse here.

[Alan Sisto]

His horse is like, I'm out. I'm not doing this stuff. You can go on your own. We do get to more on the name, though. I mean, remember? And I love this, this entire essay, all of it was written in response to a reader's question simply, is the Glanduin the Swan Fleet. Are those the same river? And Tolkien's like, let me write a 13 page type script. Hold my beer. Hold my beer. Absolutely, man.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Tolkien explaining that the Sindarin name for it would likely only be remembered in Rivendell, and even then it would only apply to the portion of the river that was still swift flowing.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

It's not the Glanduin. Once it reaches the Fens, though, it might have a name in the language of the Dunlendings.

[Alan Sisto]

True. Which, by the way, he doesn't tell us. But we only have one actual Dunlending word. Right. Forgoyle. For the straw heads. Right.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

So while Christopher has done a masterful job of summarizing what his father wrote on this, I do want to take a a quick look at the nature of Middle Earth and rivers and beacon hills of Gondor for just a bit more on this Glanduin Swan Fleet question. Tolkien writes, I think I may keep Glanduin on the map for the upper part and mark the lower part as Fenlands with the name Nyn in Elf, Waterlands of the Swans, which will adequately explain Swanfleet River.

[James Tauber]

Before we move on from the Waterlands of the Swans, we should take a quick look at the word notary behind nin in Elf. The footnote here explains that Sinder and Alf is a swan and Elf is the plural.

[Alan Sisto]

And going back to the rivers and beacon hills, we actually get a fuller explanation of how this word came to be. So Tolkien writes, alf Swan occurs, as far as I remember, only in Appendix E, where we learned that ph has the same sound as F. Right. That's the only place that the word alph appears in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien continues, it could not be Quenya, as ph is not used in my transcription of Quenya, and Quenya does not tolerate final consonants other than the dentals T, n, l, r after a vowel, also s. But he appears to have forgotten that here. Just saying.

[James Tauber]

Anyway, he continues, quenia for Swan was Alqua, and the quote, Celtic branch of of Elder and Tellaran, and Sindarin turned quirt to per, but did not, as Celtic did, alter the original P. So the much changed Sindarin of Middle Earth turned the stops to spirens after l and R, as did Welsh. So alqua became Alpa in Teleran became Alf in Sindarin, and that's spelled with a ph in Tolkien's transcription, of course.

[Alan Sisto]

It's just interesting how he, you know, follows that thread all the way from Quenya Alqua through all these changes. And of course, I'm not surprised to see that Sindarin turned the stops to spirens the way Welsh did, because, of course, Sindarin has a lot of Welsh influence.

[James Tauber]

Yep. I was just going to point out another. Another example where we get a quirk corresponding to a P. And. And again, I'll come. I'll come back to comparing Greek and Latin and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, please do.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. Many people will be familiar with the fact that the Greek word for five is penta, but the Latin is quint.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

They're related words. They come from the same proto Indo European base, but no way. But the P in pent and the quirt sound in quint is an example of this P. This versus P. I

[Alan Sisto]

have to say, it doesn't feel like a natural sort of change.

[James Tauber]

It doesn't, does it?

[Alan Sisto]

Like I get a th becoming, you know, voiced like to th or to maybe becoming an S. I kind of get that S to H lenition. But kw to P seems like a totally different mouth sound.

[James Tauber]

What's going on there is when you're doing a qu. Qu is an interesting sound because normally. When you. Normally consonants are made with sort of one part of your mouth. So a P is used with your

[Alan Sisto]

lips, dental or labial or.

[James Tauber]

Exactly right. So P is a. Is. Is a is a labial that you use your lips and a K is a velar because you're. You're using your tongue at the back of your back, your back, back of your knock, all the way back. KWA is A is a combination. Right. So what's interesting about KWA is the. The K part of the KWA is a stop or plosing stop, and the W part is A is a labial. And if you combine the stop part of the K with the labial positioning of the. Of the were, you end up with a P, because a P is a. The P is a labial style is a labial. So it's kind of you. If you take one ingredient of. Of K and the other ingredient, in my mind, you actually get a. A P. So.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow, that is. That is fascinating. That might be the deepest dive we've taken into that kind of very specific sort of linguistic change on the show, and I love it.

[James Tauber]

But the great thing is this. This happens in the languages of the

[Alan Sisto]

world, so it's a real world thing.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, exactly. And even that change from a P to an F, if you've ever wondered why we spell all those words that we do as ph and pronounce it F, the reason is because Greek underwent this exact same change to spiren. So a word like the Greek letter alpha was originally alpa, and it had a very aspirated P, which is why Latin speakers, when they wrote it out in the Latin Alphabet, wrote it with an H after the P, because it wasn't a P sound, it was a P sound, a very aspirated pie. So that's why they wrote it ph. But then in Greek, it changed to an F, it became aspirant. And so that's why we say alpha now, even though we still write it with a ph. Same with, you know, phosphorus. Phosphorus and philosophy, philosopher, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly. It would have been fascinating. It would have been pilosophos, not philosoph.

[Alan Sisto]

So we should be talking about the pile of Galadriel instead of the pile

[James Tauber]

of Galadriel or the pial. The Pialadriel.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, man. All right, so after this, the rest of the appendix is Christopher's editorial notes and writings, beginning with the explanation that the professor wanted the updated map to show Glanduin as the name of the river only in the upper portion of the river, the upper course, whereas in the Fens, it becomes just Swanfleet, Nini, Elf. Unfortunately, that fix didn't make it into the map created by Pauline Baynes or even the map in the book where the names, as Christopher explains, Glandine, missing the U as a misspelling, and Swanfleet are, in Christopher's words, blunderingly placed against the upper course of the Isen. And I've, you know, I blunderingly place things all the time, so I get that. I have full sympathy for the blundering placement.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, we get a bit more on Tharbard here. Again, Christopher commenting about the ruined town where Boromir lost his horse. And in a new bit of info, we're reminded that the Tale of Years dates the ruin and abandonment of Tharbad not to the plague in 1636, but to the floods that took place in 2912, just about 100 years before the events of Lord of the Rings.

[Alan Sisto]

And I thought that was interesting because I got the feeling that this sort of happened with the plague, but maybe they just kept a smaller force there. But. But once the floods came, they were like, we're done. And then we move into Christopher's synopsis as he integrates this etymological history with the port itself. Right. Explaining that the idea of this small Numenorean harbor that's mentioned in the history of Galadriel and Celeborn would eventually morph into the great Haven of Londire, pointing

[James Tauber]

out we've been telling you for ages that this is of course, Vinya Londe of Aldairian and Arenda's fame, but reminding us of something. I'm pretty sure I'd miss that the name Vignolande doesn't appear anywhere else in the essay.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. Isn't that interesting? Like, I know this is Vignolande. You know this is Vignolande. Most of you listening know this is Vignolande. But Tolkie never calls it that. In the essay about the history of Galadriel and Celeborn. Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn, or in any other place, this is something that only Christopher points out, that this is Vignolande. But when we went through Aldarian and Arendes, we learned that on multiple occasions Eldarion would return to find Vignolande destroyed by the sea. I kept telling, taking that as like a message from Ulmo.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, you

[Alan Sisto]

know, the end of the story of Aeldarian Arendus. The last several pages are like the further course of the narrative, as Christopher calls it. And it's a little rougher, it's a little less complete. And that's where we're told that the works there were never completed.

[James Tauber]

But Christopher adds some context, explaining that likely means just that the works weren't completed during the Aldarion's lifetime.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

After all the works were clearly done eventually. Because all this history, including the use of the port by Giriyatur's forces during the war against Sauron, presupposes that the Haven was at length restored. Aldarion even gets some credit in the passage Christopher mentions here that he laid the foundation for what Numenor was able to achieve in that war a millennium later.

[Alan Sisto]

Meaning the war in which they got a taste for power.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, it's still not a good thing. But it is a good thing.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. I mean, that's the tough part. And this is one of the things I love about Tolkien just as a whole. Right. In general, the good and the bad are not always so clean cut. It's great that he had an alliance with Gilgalad. It's great that Numenor could come to the Elves help, even if it was five years late. It's fantastic that, you know, they were able to. To build a navy that could then subjugate Sauron.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

That they had so much of a might. But it came at such a cost. And there's so many negatives associated with it, too. We can't say it's all bad, but we can't say it's all good. And that's so true about so much in the legendarium, this idea that it's black and white and it's just a bunch of, you know, perfectly good, good characters against totally evil, evil characters. No. Anyway, back to this story, of course. Finally. And we did say we'd come back to this. The idea of it being the great middle haven. As Christopher points out, it could not possibly have gotten that name for at least the first 1500 years of its existence because pillar gear wasn't established until second age 2350, which was more than 600 years after Kiryatur came in, you know, with with part of Tarman Astir's Navy and saving the day. So at that point, this would have just been the southern haven of two and not the middle haven of three.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Fandango.

[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

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[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

Guaranteed only at the Home Depot exclusion supplies to homedepot.com price match for details. We told you about the amazing PPP community after our earlier break. If you're part of that community and want to enjoy something even more special, come join the Fellowship of the Podcast on Patreon. You'll get to be in the best Discord community around, one that includes host hangouts and even live episode recordings. Like we're doing.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

Hey folks that are listening live.

[Alan Sisto]

Hello everybody of course. Your support there is also what enables me to work full time now doing all of the shows the ppp, Today's Tolkien Times, Rings of Power Wrap up, and my streaming show the PPP Plays. When you join, you also get Episode Postscripts, you can get AD free episodes, free merch and more, and you can

[James Tauber]

join our questions after Nightfall episodes or even appear as a guest in the north wind. Go to patreon.com prancingponypod to show your support and join the Fellowship of the Podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

And don't forget to rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And please recommend us to your friends, which you can do directly on Spotify now. James we're going to shift gears completely and we're going to move into now

[James Tauber]

Appendix E It is said in an essay concerning the customs of name giving among the Eldar in Valinor that they had two given names, of which the first was given at birth by the father, and this one usually recalled the father's own name, resembling it in sense or form, or might even be actually the same as the father's, to which some distinguishing prefix might be added later, when the child was full grown. The second name was given later, sometimes much later, but sometime soon after the birthday by the mother, and these mother names had great significance, for the mothers of the Eldar had insight into the characters and abilities of their children, and many also had the gift of prophetic foresight. In addition, any of the Eldar might acquire an epesse after name not necessarily given by their own kin, a nickname mostly given as a title of admiration or honour, and an Apesse might become the name generally used and recognized in later song and history, as was the case, for instance, with Erinion, always known by his Apese Gil Galad. Thus the name Alatariel, which, according to the late version of the story of their relationship, was given to Galadriel by Celeborn in Aman was an Apesse, which she chose to use in Middle Earth, rendered into Sindarin as Galadriel, rather than her father name Artanas, or her mother name Ne. It is only, of course, in the late version that Celeborn appears with a high Elven rather than Sindarin name, Teleporno. This is stated to be actually Telaran in form. The ancient stem of the Elvish word for silver was kielp, becoming celeb in Sintarin, telep Telpe in Telarin, and Telep tielpe in Quenya but in Quenya the form Telpe became usual through the influence of Teleran, for the Teleri prized silver above gold, and their skill as silversmiths was esteemed even by the Noldor. Thus telperion was more commonly used than Telperion, as the name of the White tree of Valinor. Alatariel was also Telaran. Its quenuform was Altariel. The name Celeborn, when first devised, was intended to mean silver tree. It was also the name of the tree of Tol Eresser. Celeborn's close kin had tree names, Galadhon his father, Galathil his brother, and Nimloth his niece, who bore the same name as the White Tree of Numenor. In my father's latest philological writings, however, the meaning silver tree was abandoned. The second element of celeborn as the name of a person was derived from the ancient adjectival form orna uprising tall, rather than from the related noun orne tree. Orne was originally applied to straighter and more slender trees, such as birches, whereas stouter, more spreading trees such as oaks and beeches were called in the ancient language Galadar, great growth. But this distinction was not always observed in Quenya and disappeared in Sindarin, where all trees came to be called Galadh and Orem fell out of common use, surviving only in verse and songs and in many names of both persons. And of trees that Celeborn was tall is mentioned in a note to the discussion of Numenorean linear measures.

[Alan Sisto]

Ah yes, Numenorean linear measures. My favorite section, actually. I really do like that. That's where we learned that, like, Elenda was supposed to be 7 foot 10. So like we we may bash rings of power for some things, but one thing we do give them a little grace on is they didn't find an actor who was 7 foot 10 to play Elendil, or an actress who was 6 foot 4 to play Galadriel, for that matter. Anyway, we move into the final appendix, Appendix E to the history of Galadriel and Celeborn, and return to them, or at least to their names, right, and

[James Tauber]

we get some great word notary as well. We get a reference to yet another essay, one concerning the customs of name giving among the Eldar in Valinor.

[Alan Sisto]

We're here to tell you, by the way, that it's the section called Note on Mother Names in the Shibboleth of Feanor, which is found in the Peoples of Middle Earth.

[James Tauber]

But until Christopher published the Shibboleth, this note here in Appendix E was our best source for understanding the Names given to elves.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, their given names are called Essi, and they usually get one from their father that's similar in nature to the father's name. I think of like Feanor's father name, which is Kuru Finwe, which just means skilled Fenway. And frankly, the idea of them giving names to their. It makes me think of George Foreman and his five sons, all named George. I'm just thinking Finway would have a bunch of sons named Fenway, and he did.

[James Tauber]

But also all the descendants of John Ronald Rule having rule in their names.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do.

[James Tauber]

It's true. The mother name is given later, sometimes soon after the child is born, but sometimes much later on, on after they're grown. And because these names are often given after their character begins to show, these names are often seen as having insight.

[Alan Sisto]

In fact, sometimes they actually do have insight. Right. The text says that many of the mothers had the gift of prophetic foresight. It does seem, by the way, that that's often a gift given to the mothers or the women.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, it's very much so. But aside from the two Essie or given names provided by the mother and father, an elf might also end up with a nickname name known as an Epese, which means after name. And these titles or names might be the ones that they're known by, with Christopher giving us the example of Gil Galad, whose given name was Erenion.

[Alan Sisto]

And while Christopher doesn't mention it here, the note on mother names also says later, some among the exiles gave themselves names as disguises or in reference to their own deeds and personal history. Such names were called Kilmesi self names, literally names of personal choice. I thought that was really interesting and it makes me wonder, what would your Kilmesi be? What would your self name be? So with that background on Elvish names, we move into Galadriel's names. And first off, the name Aletariel being the epesse given to her by Celeborn, apparently in Aman. So so much for the idea of her meeting him in Doriath or in Lorien or wherever.

[James Tauber]

That final version of.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, we get so many versions of that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And when that Teleran name, which means maiden crowned with radiant garland, is rendered into Sindarin, it becomes Galadriel. So from Aletariel to Galadriel.

[James Tauber]

Yep. And she chose to use that name over her Essi Artanas, which her father name meaning noble woman, or Nerwen, her mother name meaning man maiden. Now it's time for Celeborn's name. Sorry to our advertisers, but we promise we're not talking about what it sounds like we're talking about.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's why I gave you that section. I just appreciate it. I figured I'd make a crack. It would be too easy to wow. Wow or something, you know?

[James Tauber]

In that later version of the Galadriel Kullarborn story, the one where they meet in Amman, he's given the teller and name Teleportno. And we get in depth word notary on how the killip stem for silver morphed into. Into telep or telpe.

[Alan Sisto]

We get another one of those interesting word nerdery things about that change about that morph from Kiel EP to telep. But then telep becomes telpe. And then we get this really cool explanation. And I like this because it's sort of like an even more specialized change. And this is that Quenya speakers ended up adopting the teller in form of the word for a specific reason. It's because the Teleri prized silver above gold, and their skill as silversmiths was esteemed even by the Noldor. And that's why the name of the white tree became Telperion. We actually learned here that the proper Quenya for that would have been Tlperion.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So it's an interesting thing, I'm guessing. They got so used to, for example, if they're buying silverware or something like that, they're buying it. They're buying it from the Tellerin.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And so they just adopt the. The word that the Tellerin used for it.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. I love that. It's so cool.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Which is what happened. I mean, again, this is something that happens in the real world. We tend to adopt the words for things that if there's an object that's produced by a particular group, we often adopt the name that group does.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true. Makes sense.

[James Tauber]

When the name was first developed, Christopher explains, his father intended it to mean silver tree, as it was also the name of the tree of Tolaaresia, the one made as an image of the original Telperion.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right.

[James Tauber]

And a number of his close family members had tree names, including his father Galadhon, his brother Galathil, and niece Nimloth. But the professor changes his mind in yet another of his late philological writings and. No, I don't.

[Alan Sisto]

I was about to ask.

[James Tauber]

You knew I was going to ask you which one. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

All right. Well, in that late philological writing where the professor changes his mind again, he changes the Second element from orne tree to orna uprising or tall. I mean, clearly coming from some similar root. Right. But different words. Right. We're going from tree to tall. That's a significant difference. So now instead of silver tree, it's tall silver. And we even get a cool breakdown of how the. The orne noun was originally meant to describe the tall, slender trees, while galada great growth was for the stouter trees. I'm not feeling called out at all on slender versus stout. Not in the slightest. Also not tall. So I would definitely not be orne very galada here. Quenia didn't always observe that distinction. And so it is actually said to have simply disappeared in Cinderella. So all trees fall under the galath word. They don't even use orne.

[James Tauber]

It's funny because this is on the one hand completely realistic in terms of the way languages work, but also sounds like he's just making an excuse for why he used two different words for the same thing.

[Alan Sisto]

I think. So sometimes it's all about retconning and being like. Exactly. What I meant was.

[James Tauber]

But as. As one might guess from. From this discussion, Celeborn is actually tall. And in the appendix on Numenorean linear measures, we read this. The Eldar of the elder days were also very tall. Galadriel, the tallest of all the women of the Eldar, of whom tales tell, was said to be man high. But it is noted according to the measure of the Dunedain and the men of old, indicating a height of about 6ft 4 inches.

[Alan Sisto]

That's tall.

[James Tauber]

And in the mirror of Galadriel we read of Galadriel and Celeborn, very tall they were. And the lady no less tall than the lord, thus he's 64 as well.

[Alan Sisto]

And it kind of a shame they weren't 6 7. I'm kidding. Somebody just put me out of my misery for that one, please. No, they're six foot four. That's tall. That's tall. And so, you know, we might be like, ah, you know, the rings of power. You know, why do they. First of all, don't you dare say anything about Meredith Clark. She's fantastic. I love her casting. She's. She's great. I don't care that she's shorter than six foot four. What are you going to cast six foot four actors for in that role? Really? Come on now.

[James Tauber]

Plus, I mean, how many other roles in the Peter Jackson films were height

[Alan Sisto]

appropriate or other or facial hair appropriate?

[James Tauber]

Facial hair appropriate? Probably not significant.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's so many of those. So Anyway, I digress. I might have my criticisms, but the height of the cast is not one of them. Anyway, we skipped reading the rest of the appendix, which actually focuses on the confusion that some people have when looking at Galadriel's name side by side with the word Galad for tree. It doesn't help that the people of that region call themselves the Galadhrim. Tolkien wrote that they'd actually call themselves that long before she was the lady of Lorien.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And after they became rulers of that realm, her name became associated with trees, partly because of the Galadhrim, but also because of the name of her husband. Yes, it's silver tall, but it sure looks like Silver Tree.

[Alan Sisto]

And I think it was Silver Tree. We're just saying, talking like, you know, changing my mind.

[James Tauber]

This connection between her and the trees was so strong. Tolkien writes that outside Lorien, among whose memories had grown dim, her name was often altered to Galadhriel. But not in Lorien. Of course.

[Alan Sisto]

Of course not. Color that to her face. Yeah, color that to her face. Maiden crowned with, you know, a garland of hair. With radiant hair. To what tree, Lady? I mean, you know, it's not gonna. Not gonna fly. Christopher adds that the correct spelling of these elves of Lorien is with the dh, not just the D. So Galadhrim, not Galadrim. And it's the same with Karas Galadhon. And he writes, my father originally altered the voiced form of th, as in modern English, then in Elvish names to D, since, as he wrote, dh is not used in English and looks uncouth. We're used to it now.

[James Tauber]

Eventually, he changes his mind. Yeah. As he so often. But in the first edition of Lord of the Rings, the misspelling of Galadrim and Karas Galadon remained, I mean, presumably still pronounced. Still pronounced as the they would have to be.

[Alan Sisto]

But you wouldn't necessarily know that as a reader. Right. If you're reading a first edition in 1956.

[James Tauber]

Because it looked uncouth. Because we can't have that.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, that's the thing. I like that he not only is concerned about the aesthetics of a word to our ears and how it comes out of our mouths, but even how the word appears to us on the page. It takes all of this into account. It's great.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It's absolutely great. Well, when Barman became the proprietor of the Prancing Pony, the name of Barloman became associated with mail, an association that was aided by the fact that he constantly forgot about it. James, what does Barloman have in his bag for us today.

[James Tauber]

Ana in South Dakota writes, recently you've both been rethinking where to put stress on certain Elvish words. Yes, we have.

[Alan Sisto]

You think we've been having. We've been talking about that a lot. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Can you explain the rule?

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, James, this is all you.

[James Tauber]

Well, you can point out some. Some ones that you've. You've struggled with, but I'll take notes. I want to preface this by saying when we talk about rules in linguistics, we're not talking about them like road rules of you must follow this. We're talking about scientific rules where we're trying to work out how to describe a natural phenomenon.

[Alan Sisto]

See, I was really hoping you'd explain they were more like guidelines. But no, they're not. They're actually. They're scientifically trying to distinguish or trying to determine.

[James Tauber]

Obviously, it's a little different when you're conlanging. You sort of are playing the role of a rule creator. But as linguists, what you're trying to do is look at the data and say, can I actually find a pattern here? Is there some way of explaining that this. Right. And so I want to start with the way that Tolkien describes it in Appendix E. Okay. And then bring up some potential issues with that. So what he talks about is. Well, first of all, he says that the. Where you put the stress is entirely determined by the form of the word. So unlike English, where you kind of have to remember where the stress goes, there's a. There is supposedly a strict rule here. Here. If there's only two syllables, it's on the first syllable. If it's longer than that, it's either going to fall on the second last syllable or the third last syllable. And it all hinges on the second last syllable. It all hinges on whether the second last syllable is. Is what we would often call heavy. And he says, and that's called the

[Alan Sisto]

penult, when we're looking at a technical second last year.

[James Tauber]

And the third last is called the anti penult. But, yeah, so if you look at the penultimate. So, quoting from Appendix C, he says in longer words, meaning more than two syllables, the stress falls on the last syllable but one, the penult, the second last, where that contains a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by two or more consonants. So if it's a long vowel, in other words, it's got a mark on it. Like in Calabria. We know the stress is on the E in Calabrian because it's actually got an accent on, indicating that that's a long vowel. So that's stressed if it's a diphthong. In other words, two vowel sounds written together, like in Mathaithel, that's going to get the stress as well. The tricky issue that trips both of us up a lot is in this third case, which Tolkien describes in Appendix E as a vowel followed by two or more consonants. So, for example, in a word like pelagir, it's pelargir, not pelagir, because of the arg.

[Alan Sisto]

So you've got the rg following that vowel in the.

[James Tauber]

The vowel has two consonants following it. But here's the problem. First of all, there are some exceptions, but also the way he's describing it there, if you just read this description, anyone who's studied la Latin will say that sounds like the stress rules for Latin, Okay? And that is the way that the stress rules for Latin are often described. But there are lots of exceptions in Latin that have led to richer sort of explanations of what's going on. Okay? And one of the key things is what those two consonants are. In the case of Pelagia, when you have an R and a G, you can't start a word with rgb, right? You can't have a.

[Alan Sisto]

You can't have the sound,

[James Tauber]

right? So you can't. That can't be the start of a syllable. So the only way you can say pilar gear is if you split the syllable and the R goes to the penult and the G becomes part of the. The ultimate. The last syllable. So it's pel. It's pe.

[Alan Sisto]

Lar.

[James Tauber]

Gear. Right?

[Alan Sisto]

Because isn't a word or isn't a syllable. Syllable.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And so that. So the. The penult, the second last syllable then, is lar with an R at the end. And so a richer way of explaining the rule might be to say it's not when it's followed by two consonants, it's when the syllable itself has its own consonant at the end.

[Alan Sisto]

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Now I can fit things better.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, but. But there's a. There's a. There's a problem.

[Alan Sisto]

There's a problem with that. No, don't give me a rule that's easier for me to understand and then say I don't get to use it.

[James Tauber]

So. So if you come to some toys away from me. So, okay, so let's come to something like Nagathrond or Nargothron.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

Okay. Which trips has tripped both of us up. Okay.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it has.

[James Tauber]

So if you look at something Like Nagathrond or menagroth or enid, wythe or foreign wife.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

All of those words, if you follow the way it's described in Appendix E, as. Does it have two consonants? Nagathron has, well, three written consonants, but the th is one consonant.

[Alan Sisto]

Th is a single consonant.

[James Tauber]

It's a th sound. Yeah. So it's really two consonant sounds. So you would think that you would put the stress on the O. Nargothrond. Right, right.

[Alan Sisto]

Where I used to always say Nargothrond. I'd always said that until about a year ago.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Which might still turn out to be correct for two reasons. One is, you can start a syllable with thr. Yeah. You get it in Thranduil. And. And throng. Yeah, it's all right. So you can start a syllable. So if you're syllabifying Nagathrond, it's totally possible to syllabify it as Nar G,

[Alan Sisto]

as opposed to Nar Goth rond.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And if you syllabify it na got Thrond, then that got. Just becomes light. It wouldn't get distressed. And so Naga Thrond wouldn't be a heavy syllable.

[Alan Sisto]

So it goes on the antipenal alt, which is Nargothrond.

[James Tauber]

And one of the. One of the reasons for thinking that might be the case is in the poem of Mighty Kings in Nargothrond. Yeah, that poem doesn't work if it's of mighty kings in Nargothrond. The meter of the poem doesn't work. And some people argue, well, that's an English poem. Why would it have cinder and stress rules and. But I mean, Tolkien, Tolkien, you're not

[Alan Sisto]

asking a question Tolkien didn't think about.

[James Tauber]

Right, Exactly. So I wonder if, even though he's describing it in Appendix E as two consonants, that really. What he means is, can you split the syllable and put the consonant on the second last syllable? Or not. In which case that would save Nargothrond, Menegroth, Enedwaith. So I'm not sure.

[Alan Sisto]

But it wouldn't save Turambar. That would still be Turin. Turambar, wouldn't it? Can you start with an mb?

[James Tauber]

I think you can. In Quenya.

[Alan Sisto]

Can you? Okay, because that's another one where the. Where I've. For me, it's less about the meter and more about just the way it alliterates.

[James Tauber]

Well, so you get. You get really weird cases in that. So there's a. There's a case in the lay of Lathian where Tolkien alliterates fingolfin with the F of fingolfin, even though the stress is not on the F for golfing. It's so. It's really, really, really tough. There's so many others that come to bear on this. One of the other things I could go on for a little longer. I won't. There's a great article. There's a great article we should link to. From Jacob Toyber, very similar name to mine, Toyber to. He's J. Toiva, not J. Tauber. Wow. But he wrote a really interesting article looking at some of this because. And some of the richness of Latin, like Latin actually has a slightly richer rule than this and an exception called the muta cum laquida, which has to do with the menegroth or Nargothrond case. Because in Latin, the menegroth Nargothrond case would be menegroth and nargothrond, which suggests maybe that's what Tolkien intended. Really hard to say. There's two other issues I want to quickly bring up. We know we're explicitly told in some cases a th is not a thirst if it's actually if it's a compound made of a word that ends in a t combined with a word that starts with an h. So, for example, there's a word et henta, meaning to read aloud, and it's eth, but you don't say athenta, you say et henta because it's. And so in that case, it kind of messes. It kind of messes things up. The other thing I just want to finish up with, because, as I said, I could go on for a long time about this is we're told in Appendix E that ui makes a we sound. It's not two syllables. It's not. It's we. And yet we get a line in the Elbreath poem like fanui los Lalinathon, that some would argue the metre works better if it's fanui los Lalinathon.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it does work better.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. But that contradicts Appendix E, because I'm

[Alan Sisto]

looking at that Appendix E. Talking about the diphthongs or falling diphthongs, stress on the first element composed of the simple vowels. Thus, AI, ei, oi, and ui are intended to be pronounced respectively as the vowels in English. Rye, gray, boy, and ruin. So ui.

[James Tauber]

Well, you've got to be careful. You got to be careful how you say the word ruin versus the way

[Alan Sisto]

you would say, yeah, that's true.

[James Tauber]

It's really difficult. And so you get things like. What this would impact is things like Baranduin. Right. Because if you. If you pronounce the UI in Baranduin differently, it would be Baranduin.

[Alan Sisto]

If it's.

[James Tauber]

But otherwise,

[Alan Sisto]

oh, my goodness, you're right. It would be. It would change the syllable structure.

[James Tauber]

It's complicated. Anyway.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow.

[James Tauber]

So. So coming back to Anya's question, that's the complexity of the rules, and that's why we. Something like Telaran. Sindarin. That's clear. No doubt. It's Teleran, not Teleran. And it's Sindarin, not Sindarin. Right. Something like Nagathrond, Menegroth, Enidwaith.

[Alan Sisto]

It's less clear. It's less clear.

[James Tauber]

And Tolkien himself, we have recordings of Tolkien making clear mistakes in the way he says it to. My message to people is always, don't stress about it.

[Alan Sisto]

Don't stress about it. Badoom doom. Boom. Oh. Nicely played, sir. On that note, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Prancing Pony podcast. Please come back again next week when I'm joined by Matt from the Nerd of the rings for our 34th quarterly questions after Nightfall. And James, once again, thank you for what we did. Questions After Nightfall. So we've done 11 episodes. What a run. This has been great.

[James Tauber]

It was a lot of fun. And thank you so much for choosing me for such a deep conversation cut.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, always deep linguistics. I wanted to make sure I. I bring you in for sure. Good stuff. Thank you again, Alan.

[James Tauber]

And I want to thank the members of Team PPP editor Jordan Renels Barleyman, Becca Davis, social media manager Casey Hilsey, event and Patreon community coordinator Katie McKenna, graphic artist Megan Collins, video editor Yonatan Lazens, and website guru Phil Dean.

[Alan Sisto]

Please take a minute to check out the prancingponypodcast.com that's where you'll find show notes, outtakes, Prancing Pony ponderings, and our fully revamped PPP merch store. That's where you can get all sorts of cool PPP merch featuring the incredible chapter art that Megan's been doing for us for nearly four seasons.

[James Tauber]

We're all about the books here at the Prancing Pony Podcast, so be sure to also visit our library page. We try to make sure that any book we've mentioned on the show is linked there for you to purchase. We do get a small amount of compensation when you make your purchase, so. So thank you for that.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed. And 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, Brian in the uk, Jerry from Washington, Irwin from the Netherlands, Ben in Minnesota, Anthony in Texas, Zaksu in Illinois, Joshua in Massachusetts, Lucy in Texas, Erica in Texas, James in Massachusetts and Ann in Kentucky.

[James Tauber]

There's also 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, Kevin in Massachusetts, Joe in Maryland, D Scott in California, Jeffrey in Michigan, Paul in Colorado, David from Connecticut and Teresa from Texas. Thank you all so very much for your support indeed.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you.

[James Tauber]

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 most of all, your epesse for James to barliman@the prancingponypodcast.com I

[James Tauber]

look forward to reading those. Barliman does have a lot of malta sort through those, so we'll try to get to you just as soon as we're able.

[Alan Sisto]

As always, this has been far too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable listeners, but until next

[James Tauber]

time, may you rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill.

[Alan Sisto]

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