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EDITOR’S NOTE

Hello all, and welcome to another issue of Anor! With any luck, there’s a bit of something for
everyone inside – we’ve got a mix of serious and more whimsical articles, a story, and a couple of
pictures too. And if there’s nothing quite to your taste, well, I look forward to your contributions for
our next issue…

Thank you to everyone who contributed anything to this edition; you’re all fabulous, and I
didn’t even have to resort to bribery this time around – no, really, I’m impressed. The Keeper of the
Red Book hasn’t been forced to write horrifying fanfiction to fill up space! To those of you who
haven’t written anything yet, as well as those who have, hopefully what is within these pages will
inspire you to send me your own creations – intensely profound or hilariously irreverent – for
another edition next term (before the terrors of Sauron Easter Term descend upon us all).

Last year was a pretty fab year for the society. Most importantly, of course, we defeated
Oxford in the Varsity Quiz (a victory that was nothing to do with a fixing of the questions), but there
were various other highlights. Any hobbit would approve of the excellent Foreyule Feast and Annual
Dinner, and although it unfortunately turned out to be too difficult to organise a society trip to
Minas Tirith, we did make it to Stansted Mountfitchet for a day of marvelling at the dummy hanged
on the gallows and the crazy-mutant-robot duck on whose territory we were clearly encroaching.
Gwaihir (the Eagle, not Hannah, our resident Wind Lord) was kind enough to lend us his wings again
for several entertaining and hard-fought eagle debates: Denethor was named the Romeo of Middle
Earth – not a romantic hero, but the Most Tragic Character (although this editor would like to point
out that she continues to disagree with said verdict); the search for the Anti-Sam, the least
successful character, was won in a landslide victory by Manwë, because seriously, no one’s buying
that “impenetrable darkness” shtick; and the most hotly debated award of the year was Most
Effective Geographical Feature, eventually taken by Caradhras due to the cultist leanings of certain
society members. You know who you are.

I think that’s about enough from me, and all that’s left is to wish you happy reading (and to
give you a final reminder that we can never have enough submissions)! Honestly, I thought long and
hard about the best way to end this, but when I thought about significant Tolkien things happening
this year, I realised that there was but one thing to say: HOBBIT HOBBIT HOBBIT!!!

Emily Wyatt, Editor

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 Contents
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”: 10 simple words for linguistic fun ............................. 4
Jamie Douglas
Sport in Middle Earth ............................................................................................................................. 6
Samuel Cook
Have You Seen These Feet? ................................................................................................................. 10
Hannah Strachan
The Finding of the Entwives ................................................................................................................. 11
Hannah Strachan
The Syntax of Sindarin: The Position of the Verb ............................................................................... 14
Jamie Douglas
“Ooh Mister Frodo”: A Fanfiction ........................................................................................................ 18
Emily Wyatt
Some thoughts on the geography of Middle Earth ............................................................................. 19
Samuel Cook

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 “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”
10 simple words for linguistic fun
Jamie Douglas

This opening line famously came to J.R.R. Tolkien whilst marking exam papers. He had little
to no idea of what a hobbit was then, and as first-time readers we have no idea what a hobbit is
either.

Linguistically this simple line is actually quite complex – psycholinguistically, syntactically and
pragmatically. Their effects are subtle, yet Tolkien exploits them to their full potential. Consider first
the vocabulary and its psycholinguistic effects. Hobbit is unknown yet from its phonetic shape and its
co-occurrence with the words hole and ground we are given a clue as to what it might be. We are
semantically and phonologically primed to think of something rabbit-like and all that rabbit connotes
namely something small, furry, rural, even child-like maybe. Yet we know it’s not a rabbit, otherwise
it would not be called a hobbit.

Pragmatically this type of line would be well known to children; it is typical of fairy tales and
legendary or mythical stories, e.g. “In a kingdom far far away there lived a king and queen” etc. We
can thus infer that a hobbit belongs to the same realm of beings as would appear in fairy tales and,
given that we, as film-Treebeard would say, have “never heard of hobbit before,” we can assume
that it is a mythical or legendary creature of some sort. Tolkien therefore establishes the genre of
the story from the outset and firmly places it the canonical tradition of children’s story-telling.

Syntactically the opening line is ‘marked’. The locative phrase in a hole in the ground has
been preposed in front of the verb and the verb and the subject are inverted (i.e. they’ve switched
places relative to their normal positions) which has the effect of placing hobbit in sentence-final
position, a position of emphasis. Hobbit is also given emphasis through use of the ‘there’
construction whose purpose is to introduce novel information. This function can be seen by
considering the fact that ‘there’ constructions only permit indefinite noun phrases (a hobbit rather
than the hobbit) – the so-called definiteness effect. This function is also separate from the locational
function of ‘there’ since it is possible to say “Here there lived a hobbit” (where here and there would
contradict one another if there were a location).

To see the cumulative effect of these syntactic strategies, consider how the opening
sentence might have looked and how the effect would have differed in each case:

Preposing S-final position ‘There’

construction
A hobbit lived in a hole in the ground.
There lived a hobbit in a hole in the ground. 
In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.  
In a hole in the ground a hobbit lived. 

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 So, to sum up so far, in the first 10 words, we have a psycholinguistic effect that establishes
some preconceptions about what a hobbit might be like and another which says these
preconceptions are not quite right; we can guess that a hobbit is a legendary creature belonging to a
fairy tale world; and we have syntactic constructions which conspire to emphasise the novelty of
hobbit. So all signs point to the unveiling of the nature of a hobbit in the very next sentence!

But Tolkien is well aware of what we’re expecting…

Returning to the syntax of the opening sentence, there is another emphatic position that has
gone unnoticed, namely sentence-initial position. And what do we find preposed in sentence-initial
position? In a hole in the ground! Furthermore, whilst ‘there’ constructions introduce new
information, there is, of course, homophonous with the locational there. We might therefore be
dealing with a resumptive locational pro-form. This further emphasises in a hole in the ground. And
finally a hole is indefinite, i.e. it is new to the narrative and context (perhaps this is trivially true given
that these are the second and third words of the book!) So, with his readers poised to discover more
about their emphasised indefinite novel noun, what does Tolkien do? Well, he obliges…and proceeds
to describe it in great detail…too bad it’s the hole and not the hobbit!

With the description of the hole done and dusted the reader may well ask Tolkien at this
point, “Yes but what about the hobbit you mentioned?” Once again, he obliges. This hobbit is the
proprietor of that fabulously furnished hole which Tolkien has spent the whole of the second
paragraph describing. Come the fourth paragraph the reader is thinking “Finally we get to find out
what a hobbit is!” but Tolkien cannot resist. “The mother of our particular hobbit…” but “WHAT IS A
HOBBIT?!” the readers clamour, interrupting the narrator mid-sentence. Tolkien obliges once more,
though reluctantly. We get a small digression for our peace before Tolkien, with an “As I was
saying…,” can finally resume the tale of our hobbit’s genealogy.

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 Sport in Middle Earth
Samuel Cook

In case you have spent the past few months in a cave, this summer the Olympics were in the
country and sport has been everywhere. It therefore seems an opportune time to examine the
presence (or lack thereof) of sport in Middle Earth. One of the things that strikes you when reading
LOTR is the almost complete absence of recreational sport (as opposed to directly martial sports like
archery or swordfighting which one imagines were rather widespread) among all the major races
and societies. This seems distinctly odd as I find it hard to believe that everyone was too busy
fighting all of the time to indulge in a bit of a kickabout or something similar. Obviously there was no
equivalent of the Olympics, World Cup or similar competitions due to a) the fact that there aren’t
enough nations to make them viable and b) they are often fighting each other but it seems possible
that smaller-scale tournaments and local teams existed. With this in mind here is a quick survey of
the major races and factions in Middle Earth and an overview of what sports we might reasonably
expect them to play. For the purposes of this article, I am taking recreational sport to mean
organised activity with an element of competition involving more than one person and that is open
to mass participation throughout, or for a significant portion of, the year and has recreation rather
than purely exercise or honing martial skills as a primary objective (so events at special occasions do
not count, neither would jousting or archery or similar).

Hobbits

It is with reference to hobbits that the only mention of recreational sport (to my knowledge)
occurs in Tolkien. At the start of The Hobbit (An Unexpected Party, p.31), we are told:

“He [Bullroarer] charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green
Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul’s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred
yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game
of Golf invented at the same moment.”

Though this is never mentioned again, it suggests that the hobbits did play a form of golf as a
recreational sport (or game, to use Tolkien’s term). It is unlikely that this was quite the same as
modern golf as we have no mention of permanent golf courses in the Shire, which, given the amount
of detailed description Tolkien gives us of the area and the maintenance involved, one would expect
to have been mentioned if such a thing existed. There is also no indication of any such features on
the map of the Shire at the start of LOTR. It is more likely that holes were simply marked out on an
ad hoc basis for a particular game on a convenient piece of flattish land, with the aim being to get
the ball as near as possible to some sort of marker (a flag, a rock, etc.). Proper golf clubs would also
seem to be unlikely to exist as, again, no such objects are mentioned (for example at the end of The
Hobbit when Bilbo’s possessions are described at the clearance sale) and we could reasonably
expect that wealthier hobbits like Bilbo, Frodo, Merry or Pippin would own some should they have
been developed. Nevertheless, this is still the only definite instance of sport being played
recreationally that Tolkien gives us.

We also know that hobbits enjoyed party games, and that some at least enjoyed walking,
though these are not sports as such, being only put on at special occasions or solitary activities. The

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only other clue we are given to hobbit sport is that they are fond of (and very good at) throwing
stones. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to suggest that hobbits may well have played
games similar to quoits, skittles, bowls or pétanque where the central skill is accurate aiming,
possibly with amateur teams from each village in some sort of Shire League (hobbit professional
sportsmen/women seems distinctly unlikely as one gets the feeling they would not be seen as
respectable by hobbit society at large). These are also rather gentle sports and as such fit in with the
image we are presented of hobbit society and culture – it is difficult to imagine hobbits engaging in
rugby or sprinting!

Beyond this, we are into the realms of pure speculation with regard to hobbit sports. As
mentioned, it seems unlikely they would have engaged in more boisterous, energetic sports that
require contact and/or a degree of strength, such as rugby, football, tennis and running races.
Swimming and similar water-based sports would also seem to be out, due to the hobbit fear of
water (though it is conceivable that the Bucklanders could have run rowing races on the Brandywine
though this would seem a little too energetic for hobbits). Similarly, adventure sports would be out,
hobbits being distinctly unadventurous (with a few notable exceptions). In fact, I can think of only
two other sports that would seem to fit in with hobbit culture and preferences and the Shire’s
description as a rural idyll: cricket and croquet. It seems entirely plausible that hobbits would gather
down by the village ground/lawn, in the sun, and spend a day picnicking and watching the local team
with some sort of village league being possible. Possibly there would not be many fast bowlers but
otherwise cricket and croquet both seem to fit well with the slower pace of life in the Shire and are
also sports in which it is possible to have plenty of breaks so the players could remain well-fed and
watered. Again, the hobbit versions probably would not be as sophisticated as the modern games
but it does not seem too difficult to envisage hobbits playing simpler forms.

Men

With regards to men, I am going to confine my speculation to the two most documented
countries: Gondor (and, by extension, Númenor) and Rohan as there is too little information on the
“evil” groups who serve Sauron (Haradrim, Easterlings) or the remnants of older races (Dunlendings,
Wildmen, Breelanders).

First, Gondor. We know from the books that the men of Gondor, certainly in later times,
undertook many martial activities but none of these really seem to have been recreational sports.
The one exception is hunting – we certainly know that the Stewards had hunted in the past (Mardil
Voronwë hunted the Kine of Araw from which came Boromir’s horn) and it seems reasonable to
expect them and the Gondorian nobility to have continued to do so. Similarly, the kings of Rohan
also hunted – Folca is described as a great hunter who was slain by the boar of Everholt. Hunting
though, if history is anything to go by, is very much an elite activity so what other more popular
sports might there have been? As a whole, Gondorians, certainly those of Númenorean blood, seem
to have been a little too dignified to engage in anything vaguely rowdy or common, like football, but
neither do they seem to have been the kind of people who would have played the sports I have
associated with hobbits due to Gondor’s martial culture. In fact, it seems difficult to imagine people
like Faramir, Imrahil or Denethor engaging in any form of recreational sport as I feel they would have
regarded the whole thing as a pointless frippery and/or been too busy practising martial skills or
administering the country. This aloofness, though, would have been most present in the nobility. A

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large chunk of the population, of whom Boromir could be seen as more representative, had the
blood of lesser Men in them so might therefore have been more willing to engage in sport but our
information on them is limited so it’s difficult to draw conclusions. Boromir though, would definitely
have played rugby and it seems likely that there would have been plenty of soldiers willing to join in
with him. It might, however be more instructive to turn to the Rohirrim to consider what more
“common” men might have got up to.

The Rohirrim, with their physicality and generally boisterous and uncomplicated nature,
seem to be exactly the kind of people who would play contact team sports like rugby or football and
would be prepared to take time out to do so. It is very easy to picture 30 Rohirrim running around a
pitch for 80 minutes after a ball and beating each other up in the name of sport, especially with the
whole slightly homoerotic warriors’ brotherhood they have going on (rugby: a sport where hugging
each other men and sticking your head next to their bum or groin is actively encouraged). Similarly
physical sports like boxing or wrestling would also have been right up their street. I feel that they
would probably have regarded non-contact and/or more technologically-advanced sports (i.e. those
where some sort of implement is required) like hockey, tennis, badminton, cricket or athletics as a
bit girly and unsuitable for “real men” (possibly my image of the entire population of Rohan as
massive lads is a little skewed). The other important point about the Rohirrim is that they are a horse
people so it also seems entirely likely that they would have some form of equestrian sport. Jousting
seems unlikely as this would be alien to their fighting style and modern dressage or showjumping is
out for obvious reasons. I also find it difficult to believe they would breed racehorses as these would
be useless militarily. What they might well have had are competitions of riding skill, such as archery
from horseback (a little too militaristic to be classed as recreational sport) or rodeos (which is
effectively what Léod, Eorl’s father, died doing). Admittedly, these sorts of contests would only be
open to the horse-owning elite but, as we’ve established, the rest of the population would seem
likely to be quite happy playing other sports.

Elves

If you thought the elite Númenoreans looked down on sport… Well, we do know that the
Elves hunted for sport – some travelled with Oromë; Amrod and Amras are described as hunters in
the Silmarillion, and Celegorm is given Huan for his dedication to hunting. The hunting of Carcharoth
also shows that Elves seemed to be well practised at such activities. But otherwise, Elves seem to be
too solitary and aloof to really engage in recreational sport, with the possible exception of athletics
and gymnastics, which would seem to fit well with their agility and litheness. Though even then, the
image of Elrond, Galadriel or Círdan deigning to run anywhere or indeed engaging in any sort of
strenuous physical activity seems a little incongruous. Possibly the younger Elves, like Legolas, might
have engaged in some form of agility and endurance contest but I suspect Elvish sport was a
distinctly underdeveloped area.

Dwarves

We certainly know Tolkien’s Dwarves would not be the subject of dwarf-tossing by the larger
races (at least not voluntarily) but as to what sports the Dwarves themselves practised, there is not a
great deal of information. As with all the races of Middle Earth, they were proficient with various
kinds of weaponry and we also know they were musicians but there is nothing mentioned with

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regard to recreational sport. The way the Dwarves are portrayed also seems to me to largely
preclude sport – they seem too solitary to have engaged in team sports and too concerned with
recapturing past glories or making things to do sport more generally. Possibly a bit of wrestling but,
to my mind, the closest Dwarves would have got to recreational sport would be competitive
smithing, i.e. who can make the shiniest armour quickest or something similar. Perhaps Narsil,
Glamdring or Frodo’s mithril coat were the products of such competitions which would mean magic
swords would have been ten-a-penny in the First Age, before the Dwarves lost a lot of their lore.
Perhaps all the Noldor and Gonnhirrim of Belegost and Nogrod had named swords and axes which
would have led to rather a lack of names – you can only have so many Orcsmashers and
Balrogsmiters so there must have been a dwarf wandering around with the mighty axe Flowerkitten
(insert own ludicrous name here)….

Orcs

When they were not busy doing Sauron’s bidding or fighting each other or anyone else that
came along, one suspects sports were not exactly high on the Orcish list of priorities (somewhere
below plotting, scheming, conniving and murdering). Anything they did do would probably have
been somewhat gladiatorial – possibly like cage fighting at its least violent and war at its most. One
suspects blood sports were the order of the day – I can see Orcs betting on Wargs in a fighting pit
and then cheerfully fighting each other and throwing enemies into the pit with the Wargs when
losing Orcs attempted to recoup their losses…. But I think the notion of recreation would be rather
foreign to most Orcs so I think terming any of this recreational sport is a little far-fetched.

Well, that is the end of this brief survey of sport in Middle Earth – if anyone wants to suggest
what some of the other races like Ents, Trolls or Eagles got up to in their spare time, feel free to do
so. I think we can safely conclude that if there was a Middle Earth Olympics, the Dwarves would not
turn up, the Elves would win all the athletics medals but would not compete in anything else, the
Hobbits would turn up for the food and would win all the events that took more than a day and the
Men would win everything else (though the Gondorian elite would also not turn up as they would be
too busy looking grave and concentrating on higher matters). Though then the Orcs would steal the
medals (and probably try to eat them) chuck everyone else in a fighting pit with some wargs before
starting a civil war, making the whole thing rather pointless. So maybe there is a good reason Tolkien
almost completely neglected to mention it.

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 Hannah Strachan

10
 THE FINDING OF THE ENTWIVES
Hannah Strachan

PROLOGUE
This following record was originally included in the Thain’s Book (a copy of the famous Red
Book of Westmarch) by the Tooks when it was taken to Gondor by Thain Peregrin to be copied for
King Elessar. However, the scribes of Gondor chose to omit it as it was considered of ‘little
importance to the War of the Ring’ which was the main concern of Men at that time. Fortunately, a
copy of it was retained at the Great Smials and, while experts still argue about whether it should be
included or not with the main body of the Red Book, I have here compiled a translation from the
original hobbitish along the same lines of the Red Book in order that readers may still enjoy its story.

CHAPTER I

AN INTERRUPTED PARTY
As everyone knows, hobbits are very fond of parties. However, if you’re only a young hobbit
it is rather difficult to find yourself either invited to one or hosting one. As a result, it is not
uncommon to see young hobbits, especially ones in their early tweens, enjoying picnic parties, as
they involve all of the food, gifts and fun (in that order) of adult parties but have no adults to tell a
young hobbit off for their poor table-manners. So it happened that one bright day in June, two
young cousins set off to enjoy a picnic party on the North Moors.

The hobbits’ names were Holfast Gardner and Peregrin Took II. Holfast had just turned 21
the previous week and, feeling that he needed to celebrate becoming a ‘proper’ tween rather than
being ‘only just’ a tween, had invited his younger cousin for a picnic party. Of course, he’d already
had a birthday party, but, like all hobbits, Holfast was rather partial to having parties, even though
he had inherited a fairly ‘sturdy’ head on him like his grandfather the Mayor, Master Samwise. His
cousin – who was affectionately, called ‘Little Pip’ amongst his family after his other grandfather, the
Thain of Tookborough, who he was very close to – didn’t need much persuading to go on a picnic
party at all, being in awe of his older cousin as well as preferring a private party over having to listen
to all the middle-aged hobbit talk at his Great-Aunt Ruby’s house in North Cleveland where his
father, Faramir was paying a visit.

So, after eating their elevenses with the adults, the two young hobbits set off into the
moors, Little Pip carrying the dwarf-sized basket of food, almost twice the size of himself, that
Holfast had picked out for the two of them and some friends, but which he was quite content to
share between the two of them when his friends had been stopped from going to the Moors by their
parents. For, even thought the Moors were counted as a part of the Shire and some hobbits went to
hunt rabbits and small deer there, they were still a bit ‘wild’, not hobbitish enough for decent
hobbits to want to spend time in them. But, being young and rather excitable little hobbits, the two

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cousins saw going for a picnic there a bit of a game, although Holfast had had to promise his Auntie
Goldilocks to watch out for Little Pip and see him safely home before dark. For it was rumoured that
some things of the dark, left over from the Third Age still wandered in the North, and there were
other tales of even stranger things that had been forgotten…

Little Pip struggled on with his basket bravely for several miles before he tripped up over a
stone, landing in a heap with the basket on top of him.

‘Holfast, I’m tired’, he cried out. ‘Can we eat the picnic yet?’

How does being tired mean we have to eat the picnic? It’s your feet not your belly you’ve
hurt,’ Holfast retorted, surveying his cousin ruefully rubbing his little feet. Holfast cared a great deal
for the little hobbit, but he didn’t like the look of the nearby Bindbole wood. He’d planned to follow
its edge till it met the Bywater River and then have the picnic party beside it so that they could dip
their feet in the cool stream when they got too hot.

‘Come on, Pip, it’s not much further. Only another half mile at most: then we can eat!’

‘That’s half a mile too much! Can’t we eat a little bit of it now?’ Little Pip whined. ‘My arms
ache, and my feet ache and there’s so much food that we could have a second elevenses as well as a
party. Why not here besides this big elm? It’s nice and shady’

The tree in question stood a little apart from the rest of the wood, its two main branches
down, gently brushing its bough, almost looking as if it was admiring the late blossom on the
branches of its neighbouring trees. Something about this seemed faintly familiar, like a story he’d
heard long ago, puzzling Holfast, and confirming in his mind to leave the spot.

‘There ain’t no such thing as elms in the North Moors, Little Pip. My pa says so and he’s a
gardener in name and trade.’

‘Hrum ha, a gardener is he? That is a good thing to be indeed’, said a voice above them. ‘But
you should not use two negative words together like that. It is not good grammar!’ The two hobbits
looked up, just in time to see the questionable elm tree’s ‘branches’, which now appeared more like
arms with large, weathered hands at their ends, sweep them up into the air. Holfast cried out in
terror, and beat with his little fist at his captor’s knuckles. It did as much good as hitting a tree, less
for he actually grazed his own knuckles rather than his captors, forcing him to stick his fist in his
mouth and stare up at the Tree-Man that had caught them.

On a second glance though, it looked more like a Tree-Woman. They were at least thirteen
feet high, but had rosy cheeks, like red apples, in the middle a kindly looking face, framed by corn-
coloured, reed-like hair, quite twiggy at the roots. A green-grey moss covered most of the bent body,
save the slender but smooth-skinned arms and long, slender legs, which made up more than half of
her height before ending in eight toed feet. But what caught Holfast’s gaze the most was the deep,
brown eyes. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before, so penetrating they were, with a fleck of
green through the middle; an inner light perhaps reflecting the creature’s inner thoughts, or like a

12
pool touched by a dragonfly, Holfast thought. After a while, a small intake of breath turned Holfast’s
attention onto his cousin, who seemed equally taken by the Tree-Woman’s eyes.

‘Holfast, it’s an Ent! A real Ent!’ Little Pip breathed. ‘Or maybe it’s even an Entwife! It’s their
eyes: they’re exactly like how Grandpa Pippin described them, ‘filled up with ages of memory and
long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface sparkling with the present’. I just can’t believe it!’

‘Ha hrum, yes, I am an Entwife, as they say in your tongue’, the Entwife replied, for an
Entwife it was. ‘But what creature are you, little ones, and how do you know of Ents and Entwives
when so many others have forgotten?’

‘We’re hobbits of course’, Holfast piped up. ‘I’m Holfast Gardner, Holfast to my friends, and
he’s my cousin, Pergrin Took, Little Pip as we call him.’

‘Hoom hrum, you are hasty folk to give out your names so easily! They are nice little names
to be sure, but ‘hobbit’ sounds like a made-up word…it is definitely not in the old lists…’

‘That’s like what Treebeard said to Grandpa Pippin!’ Little Pip squeaked excitedly. ‘Hobbits
weren’t in the list so Grandpa suggested a new line for them. Oh, what was it, something like

‘Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers’

Yes, that was it!’

‘Treebeard, hoom hm!’ the Entwife roared. ‘That baroom-hrum-troom! He loved me once,
but when my land was destroyed by fire, by those burárum, those orcs; where was Treebeard then!’

With this, the Entwife’s grip on the hobbit boys tightened till Holfast feared he’d snap like a
twig. He didn’t know Thain Peregrin’s stories as well as Little Pip, but he could vaguely remember
that the Ents had defeated a sorcerer and his army, once the Thain and his cousin, the Master of
Buckland had managed to ‘rouse’ them: it appeared that he and his cousin had done the same thing!
Little Pip was panicking, spurting out bits of his Grandpa’s stories, while his voice gradually got
higher and higher pitched.

‘Oh, I don’t actually know Treebeard; that was my Grandpa, not me, I mean, he just
mentioned his name in passing – said Treebeard was nice, I mean he didn’t say that much about him,
he was just lost in great Fangorn forest with his cousin you see, and – ’

‘Silence, little rabbit! You know not of what you speak. The Forest of Fangorn is nothing! I
will show you the Garden of Fimbrethil!’ and with that, the mysterious Entwife carried them off into
the deep wood.

13
 The Syntax of Sindarin
The position of the verb
Jamie Douglas

0. Introduction

The lack of a substantial corpus of Sindarin prose makes an analysis of Sindarin syntax
incredibly difficult. Although there is a fair amount of poetry, this is generally not a desirable basis on
which to build a syntactic description. Nevertheless languages which permit relatively free word
orders, either in general or in specific genres, often build clauses around a relatively stable ‘pivot’
element.

David Salo in his 2004 book A Gateway to Sindarin states “The basic word order of a verbal
sentence is Verb-Subject (-Object) or VS(O)” (p. 204). If we accept this statement, this would place
Sindarin typologically in the same group of languages as many Semitic languages (Hebrew and
Arabic), Polynesian languages (Fijian and Maori) and Celtic languages (Irish Gaelic and Welsh). That
Welsh and Sindarin have a lot of characteristics in common is well-known and this may be taken as a
form of justification for assuming canonical VSO order in Sindarin.

I will propose another analysis, or rather a reanalysis, of the data arguing that the position of
the finite verb in Sindarin is preferentially (and underlyingly) the second position in the clause, with
surface VSO order appearing under specific syntactic conditions to be made clear below. The
structure of the argument is as follows: Sections 1 and 2 make a distinction between imperative and
finite verb forms, arguing that treating them as separate syntactic objects offers a more consistent
analysis of Sindarin verbs; Section 3 considers the position of full noun phrases (NPs) versus
pronouns; Section 4 suggests that Sindarin be analysed as a so-called pro-drop language; and Section
5 concludes.

1. Imperatives

Imperative verb forms are not given a unified treatment in Salo (2004) – indeed syntax is not
given more than a surface, and hence non-unified, description – but, in treating imperatives
separately from the finite verbs, I believe a clearer picture of the position of the Sindarin verb
appears. Imperative verb forms (ending in –o) are used commands, order and possibly wishes.
Without exception, they appear in clause-initial position as shown in the following examples from
Salo (2004: 204-6):

Caro den i innas lín ‘may one do your will’, pedo mellon ‘say friend, may a friend speak’, lacho calad
‘let light flame’, drego morn ‘let darkness flee’, tolo i arnad lín ‘may your kingdom come’, cuio i
pheriain ‘may the halflings live’, lasto beth lammen ‘listen to the word of my tongue’, tiro nin ‘guard
me, watch over me’ etc.

(my emphasis and adapted translations)

Sindarin thus shows VSO word order for imperative clauses as Salo would predict.

14
 2. Finite verbs

The situation with imperatives contrasts with that of finite verbs, where ‘finite’ means that a
verb form is inflected for tense, person and number. Consider the following examples from The
King’s Letter (Sauron Defeated, p. 131 quoted in Salo 2004: 225-6):

(1) Aragorn Arathornion Edhelharn anglennatha i Varanduiniant

Aragorn Arathorn-son Elf-stone approach-FUT-3s the Brandywine Bridge

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elf-stone will approach the Brandywine Bridge

(2) Ennas aníra i aran…suilannad

There want-PRES-3s the king…greet

There the king wants to greet…

In (1) the verb is in second position following the Noun Phrase (NP) subject and in (2) the verb is in
second position following the Adverbial Phrase (AdvP). Neither of these sentences show VSO word
order. Salo (2004: 204) in fact analyses (2) as showing VSO word order but his citation in this
instance leaves out the adverbial phrase ennas. By analysing finite verbs in this way, the majority of
different surface word orders that Salo notes (and which can only be described as somehow
‘deviant’ word orders) are unified under one analysis1.

3. Noun phrases

A potential counterexample to the V2 phenomenon, also from The King’s Letter, is (Sauron
Defeated, p. 131 quoted in Salo 2004: 225):

(3) Edregol e aníra tírad…

Especially he want-PRES-3s see

He especially wants to see…

In (3) there is an adverbial phrase in first position, an NP (here a pronoun) in second position and
then the finite verb in third position. However, it is important to note that the NP is a pronoun and
not a full NP. Many languages are known to place pronouns and especially clitic pronouns before the
verb regardless of any canonical positions that NPs might have. French, for example, canonically
places object NPs after the verb, but when the object is a pronoun, it always appears in pre-verbal
position. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that Sindarin does something similar in this
respect. This analysis would predict that two full NPs would not be able to appear before the verb,
but a pronoun and some other element (including a full NP or another pronoun) would be able to.

1
It is not unusual for languages to target the second position in the clause. Germanic languages, with the
notable exception of English, display the so-called V2 phenomenon where finite verbs occupy second position
in main clauses; and Warlpiri, spoken in Australia, requires inflected auxiliaries to be in second position despite
otherwise displaying remarkably free word order (Hale 1983).

15
This prediction is borne out by the inscription from the West Gate of Moria (Tolkien 2001: The
Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, p. 120):

(4) Im Narvi hain echant

I Narvi them make-PAST-1s

I, Narvi, made them

(5) Celebrimbor o Eregion teithant i thiw hin

Celebrimbor of Eregion draw-PST-3s the sign-pl this-pl

Celebrimbor of Eregion drew these signs

Examples (4) and (5) are both transitive sentences with a full subject NP. However, whilst (5) has a
full object NP positioned on the other side of the verb to the subject, (4) has an object pronoun
which appears before the verb along with the subject. This supports the analysis that Sindarin finite
verbs appear in clause-second position in general, but it also shows that this canonical position may
be obscured on the surface by other aspects of Sindarin syntax (in this case, the syntax of pronouns).

4. Pro-drop in Sindarin

Now let us look at pronouns in a little more detail. Sindarin appears to be a richly inflecting
language as far as verbs are concerned, i.e. there are presumably distinct endings for each of the
three persons, singular and plural (the inflectional system is not well attested enough for this to be a
certainty). Sindarin also appears to allow a subject pronoun to be absent. This is usually accounted
for with reference to the fact that the endings on the verb suffice to distinguish the person and
number features of the subject, and so a subject pronoun is not needed. In mainstream syntactic
theory, Sindarin would be said to be a pro-drop language (like Italian and Spanish but unlike French
and English, which require an overt, i.e. pronounced, sentential subject). The standard analysis of
pro-drop languages is to say that there is a subject pronoun, called pro (pronounced ‘little pro’), but
that this pronoun is phonologically null/empty, i.e. it is not pronounced (Rizzi 1982, 1986).

For example, this would give us the following analysis of Gilraen’s linnod (Tolkien 2001: Appendices,
Appendix A, p. 46):

(6) (pro) ónen i-Estel Edain, (pro) ú-chebin estel anim

pro give-PAST-1s the-Hope to-the-Edain, pro NEG-keep-PRES-1s hope for-me

I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself

This would also apply to such cases as (7) and (8) (Salo 2004: 205) which would instantiate the
option of allowing two pronouns (but not two full NPs) to appear before the verb.

(7) (pro) le linnathon

pro to-you sing-FUT-1s

16
 I will sing to you

(8) (pro) le nallon

pro to-you cry-PRES-1s

I cry out to you

The use of pro may be restricted to first and second person (singular) subjects (a very common
pattern in the languages of the world) but this is necessarily highly speculative. The pro-drop analysis
straightforwardly accounts for other cases of apparent verb-initial word orders without claiming that
Sindarin has basic VSO word order. Given the evidence from the previous sections, the pro-drop
analysis provides a standard and consistent account of the finite verb position in Sindarin.

5. Conclusion

We have seen how imperative and finite verb forms have different syntactic behaviour in
Sindarin. Whilst the former appear in initial position, the latter appear in second position. I have also
considered full NPs, pronouns and the phonologically null pronoun pro and have argued that these
support rather than challenge the hypothesis that finite verbs appear in second position in the
clause. These analyses rest upon standard assumptions and treatments in transformational-
generative syntactic theory.

References

Hale, K. (1983). Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory 1: 5-47.

Rizzi, L. (1982). Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Rizzi, L. (1986). Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 501-557.

Salo, D. (2004). A Gateway to Sindarin. Utah: University of Utah Press.

Tolkien, J.R.R. (2001). The Lord of the Rings. Seven-volume edition. London: HarperCollins.

17
 Emily Wyatt, after Kate Beaton
(Christine Lee made me do it)

18
 Some thoughts on the geography of Middle Earth
Samuel Cook

Well, it was inevitable really. Sooner or later I was bound to write an article based on the
maps in LOTR, what with my rather extensive knowledge of them. So here goes, hopefully I’ve at
least managed to make it interesting. It might help if you have an atlas (or Google Earth/Maps) and
your copy of LOTR handy (I did try to put a nice diagram of a map of Middle Earth overlaid on a map
of Europe but getting the scale and projection right proved rather too tricky).

It is well known that Tolkien intended his work to be a mythology, even an alternative
history, for England. We also know that, although Middle Earth resembled NW Europe in many
respects, it was not actually supposed to be a direct geographical predecessor of modern Europe
(Tolkien is on record as saying the map was devised through dramatic considerations, rather than
geological, geographical or palaeontological ones and that he sometimes wished that a more
realistic map had been possible – see Letters, p.220, #165). Similarly, the Shire, although reminiscent
of the rural England of the early 20th century, is simply based on this, rather than actually being this.
However, I thought it would be interesting to attempt to see how the map of Middle Earth
corresponded with the current one if we did assume they were directly related and posit some
potential explanations for the obvious changes (hopefully I can go a bit further than “because of the
Valar”). Before continuing I should point out that all the measurements and results are rather
inaccurate (owing to the size of the maps, the inaccuracy of the measurement instruments and the
impatience of the author) and should be interpreted as ballpark figures or locations only. I also
assume that there has been no substantial continental drift to simplify matters.

The small-scale map of the whole of the West of Middle Earth in the back of LOTR
represents an area of about 1500 by 2000 miles, that is around 3,000,000 sq. miles or about the size
of Australia. Of course the actual area of land is somewhat smaller than this, as about a quarter of
the map is filled with sea, but still represents an area stretching from Great Britain across to St
Petersburg, down past the Crimea to Crete and back across to the Straits of Gibraltar. In other
words, quite a large area. Based on what we know of Middle Earth, and as alluded to above, it makes
sense to assume that the map represents the region that is now known as Europe – it’s the western
part of a landmass that stretches far into the east (Asia) and to the south (Africa, which
unsurprisingly corresponds to Harad). There is (or at least was) also land, in the form of Aman, to the
west across the sea (the Americas). Where to start though, with an attempt to compare the two
maps? The obvious point seems to be the Shire, which, as mentioned above, is very much based on
early-20th century rural England, especially Oxfordshire and parts of the Midlands where Tolkien
lived and worked. Helpfully, this is in approximately the same relative position as the landmass now
called Great Britain, incorporating the country of England, so this makes things easier. Specifically, I
have assumed that Hobbiton is equivalent to modern Oxford to give a fixed point to measure from.
Others may disagree or prefer a different point but this seems to me to be a reasonable starting
point for this wholly-hypothetical article.

What does this therefore mean about the modern location of some of the important places
in Middle Earth? Let’s start with Eriador, the north-west portion of the map, between Ered Luin, the
Misty Mountains and the Greyflood, and location of the Shire, Rivendell and the surrounding lands.

19
Firstly, not strictly in Eriador but of interest, the glaciated Icebay of Forochel. This turns out to
equate to eastern Scotland and the north-west North Sea with its southern limit (i.e. the north edge
of the map) being on the same latitude as Aberdeen. So the Lossoth, the Snowmen of Forochel,
whose description suggests they are Inuit, are in fact Scottish. Modern Scots not having a great deal
in common with Arctic hunter-gatherers, this suggests that the Lossoth migrated north and west
sometime in the past few thousand years, perhaps after being driven out by the Caucasian ancestors
of the modern Scots advancing from the south. Possibly then, the Neolithic peoples who built Skara
Brae, the Ring of Brodgar and similar structures in northeast Scotland were actually eskimoes.
Alternatively, as modern genetics posits that the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the
Inuit and related groups, originated in the Altai region of Russia/Mongolia/China/Kazakhstan, the
Lossoth actually migrated east, unlike all other groups of Men in Tolkien, across the Northern
Wastes and settled in Central Asia before reaching the Americas with all traces of their real origins
being removed by later Scots. This would also be easier than attempting to cross the ocean. The icy
nature of Forochel also suggests that the global thermohaline circulation was different as sea and
land ice is not currently present in Scotland, due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream (or North
Atlantic Drift to give it its proper name). Similar latitudes not warmed by such ocean currents, such
as the Sea of Okhotsk or Hudson Bay, are covered by sea ice in winter and permafrost is present on
the adjoining land so this suggests that we are dealing just with circulation changes in the ocean
rather than an unknown glacial period.

Actually in Eriador, some places of interest: Mithlond, the Grey Havens, is very close to the
present Milford Haven in SW Wales, with Lindon and Beleriand beyond (before it was flooded) being
Ireland or under the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic. So the Elves were Welsh and Irish. Indeed,
evidence suggests that some Elves survived in these areas into Late Antiquity – the druids so
demonised by the Romans, who had such an elevated position in the pre-Roman societies of these
areas sound distinctly elvish, or at least of elvish heritage, with their affinity with nature and combat
prowess. Possibly “of elvish heritage” is the more likely possibility as the druids’ religious aspects are
distinctly unelvish and much more mannish so these people may have been the descendants of
unions of elves and men, who formed their own elite group and transmitted an increasingly
fragmented version of elvish traditions fused with human religion.
Two other places of note in Eriador are Bree and Rivendell. Bree is now under the North Sea,
somewhere between Harwich and Oostende in Belgium, suggesting sea levels now are higher than in
the Third Age, either because of warming temperatures (unlikely – climatic information in LOTR
doesn’t seem to indicate that Middle Earth was significantly colder than modern Europe), ice melt
(more likely, given that the ice that apparently covered Scotland has melted) or long-term isostatic
subsidence (unusual outside tectonically active zones). It is unclear why Bree would have flooded
because of any of these and not the Shire, suggesting substantial topographic change since the start
of the Fourth Age, possibly through Valinorean intervention (I got a page before invoking it, OK).
Rivendell, meanwhile, can be found just south of Paderborn in Germany, putting the Misty
Mountains (which seem to have disappeared) in a broad arc from the Netherlands, through western
Germany and down into western Switzerland and SW France. This puts the White Mountains mainly
slightly south of the modern Alps, so there does seem to have been some continental drift to push
the mountains into their current position, probably through rifting in the Mediterranean (which
should be over a much longer timescale than that available. Valar again?).

20
 Moving out of Eriador and looking at a selection of some of the other major locations in
Middle Earth, Erebor is now in western Poland, near Poznan, putting Mirkwood on the German-
Polish border down to Prague (formerly Dol Guldur) in the Czech Republic. This puts Bilbo’s trek in
perspective – he walked from Oxfordshire to western Poland. Again, Erebor seems to have
disappeared – possibly the dwarves mined it too much and it collapsed? Erosion is possible but
would take too long. In the same region, Lorien would now be in southern Germany, just north of
Lake Constance, around Tuttlingen, whilst the west-gate of Moria would be in NW Alsace in the
Vosges, near Drulingen. Durin and the Dwarves of his house are therefore Franco-German (the
French part can be seen in the singing and grumpiness, the German part in the love of engineering).
This suggests the Vosges and the nearby Jura are the southern remnants of the Misty Mountains
with the northern ranges having mysteriously vanished, much like Erebor. Maybe Oromë stamped
on northern Germany to get rid of the mountains that had been put there to hinder him?
Moving further south down the Misty Mountains, Isengard is in SE France, between Lyon and
Grenoble (around Voiron), though, unfortunately, Orthanc does not seem to have been so enduring
that it has survived into the modern day. It would indeed seem to be true that all things wear under
the sun of mortal lands. Looking at Rohan, Fangorn has turned into Switzerland, probably a product
of the general mountain rearrangement that seems to have occurred in the region. Helm’s Deep, like
Isengard, would now be in SE France, in the Hautes-Alpes region, near the town of Gap. Edoras,
though, has become the Principality of Monaco, with all traces of Rohirric culture seeming to have
been lost and the wide plains appear to have been flooded by the Mediterranean or raised into
mountains. One wonders what Theoden, Eomer and their contemporaries would think of Monte
Carlo. I cannot help feeling they would not approve of the gambling, ostentatiousness and designer
suits (and the lack of horses).
Finally, moving into Gondor, this seems to have been largely submerged with Minas Tirith
under the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The tomb of Elessar is forever lost….
The last region I will consider here is, of course, Mordor. This would now stretch from the
Aegean across to southern Italy with Barad-dûr near Salerno, not far from Naples. Possibly the Mafia
was originally founded by Black Nùmenoreans after the fall of Sauron? Again, there seems to be no
obvious reason why part of the area has subsided and flooded to form the Aegean and Ionian Seas
whilst other parts have remained dry to form Greece and southern Italy. The most likely culprit is
tectonism, this being the only region that evidences such processes in Middle Earth – perhaps the
destruction of the Ring weakened some of the very foundations of Mordor as well, leading to long-
term subsidence. Orodruin, meanwhile, is now the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, the site of
the Ancient Greek colony of Pithekoussai. This is a volcanic island, with Vesuvius not far away, so it
would appear that Mount Doom is alive and well despite the fact that the world has changed around
it. So you know where you need to go on holiday if you want to forge your own Ring of Power
(though the possible destruction of Naples and the surrounding area if the Ring were subsequently
destroyed might be frowned upon by the Italian government).

In conclusion, comparing the maps of Middle Earth and modern Europe yields some
surprises: Scottish Inuit, Welsh Elves, Franco-German Dwarves and gambling Rohirrim. However,
there is no clear explanation for how the landscape has changed between the two periods, with
most of the possible processes occurring over a longer timescale than would seem to be available.
This is obviously unsurprising given, as mentioned in the introduction, that the map was mainly
driven by dramatic needs and that the issue of geographical reality did not really occur to Tolkien

21
until much later, by which point it was far too late to make any major alterations. Unsurprisingly,
rivers can actually flow south to north and mountains are not generally naturally arranged in a
square (look at Mordor – it’s got right angles!). The alternative explanation (for those of you who
refuse to believe that Tolkien was in some way fallible), as advanced earlier, is to invoke the Valar (or
even Eru) to explain any physical impossibilities, like the wholesale flooding of seemingly random
areas and the disappearance of half a mountain range, something that would take hundreds of
millions of years, within a few tens of thousands at most. Some changes, though, can just about be
explained by known physical processes – deglaciation and subsequent sea-level rise and changes in
circulation in particular.

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23