UT - Druedain / Second Age Emigrants from Numenor

***Alcuin*** · 03-12-2018, 11:31 PM

I wondered if perhaps they’d been carved in the second or third century of the Third Age.

After the Men of the Mountains welshed on their oath to Isildur at Erech, they hid and dwindled until there were no more. Then their spirits paraded through what was later Harrowdale into the Door to the Paths of the Dead. The Dúnedain of Calenardhon couldn’t have enjoyed this experience any more than the Rohirrim did later, even though they might have better understood it, or been less fearful of the specters of the Oathbreakers. At least at the beginning of Gondor, they’d have had a chance of remembering their old alliance with the Drúedain: even though all the Drúedain had left Númenor before it sank, they were still technically subjects of the King; and at least until all memory of old friendships and alliances was lost, I think they might have been willing to carve watch-stones at the turnings of the climbing road. After all, during the Second Age, the Men of the Mountains were still using the Sauronic shrine beneath Dimholt as living men.

If the watch-stones were carved in the First Age, then that shrine must be a very bad place indeed!

Surely the stones are indeed Drúedain watch-stones: after all, Tolkien bothered to discuss them as such. In which case, once the carvers were dead, did they lose their power? And what did the carvers hope to accomplish, other than making the local inhabitants feel better? There can be little doubt they were ancient long before the Rohirrim arrived. So the local inhabitants, other than carvers of the Drúedain or their near relatives with similar skills and habits, were the Dúnedain of Calenardhon, who replaced by Eorl and the Éothéod (i.e., the Rohirrim) five hundred years before the War of the Ring; or the Men of the Mountains (i.e., the Dead Men of Dunharrow), who were replaced by the Dúnedain of Gondor (Calenardhon) around the end of the Second Age. If these Men of the Mountains/Dead Men of Dunharrow were akin to the people of the Second House of the Edain, are they not the original settlers of the place?

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03-12-2018, 11:31 PM	#1
*Alcuin* Salt Miner Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: gone to Far Harad Posts: 987	I wondered if perhaps they’d been carved in the second or third century of the Third Age. After the Men of the Mountains welshed on their oath to Isildur at Erech, they hid and dwindled until there were no more. Then their spirits paraded through what was later Harrowdale into the Door to the Paths of the Dead. The Dúnedain of Calenardhon couldn’t have enjoyed this experience any more than the Rohirrim did later, even though they might have better understood it, or been less fearful of the specters of the Oathbreakers. At least at the beginning of Gondor, they’d have had a chance of remembering their old alliance with the Drúedain: even though all the Drúedain had left Númenor before it sank, they were still technically subjects of the King; and at least until all memory of old friendships and alliances was lost, I think they might have been willing to carve watch-stones at the turnings of the climbing road. After all, during the Second Age, the Men of the Mountains were still using the Sauronic shrine beneath Dimholt as living men. If the watch-stones were carved in the First Age, then that shrine must be a very bad place indeed! Surely the stones are indeed Drúedain watch-stones: after all, Tolkien bothered to discuss them as such. In which case, once the carvers were dead, did they lose their power? And what did the carvers hope to accomplish, other than making the local inhabitants feel better? There can be little doubt they were ancient long before the Rohirrim arrived. So the local inhabitants, other than carvers of the Drúedain or their near relatives with similar skills and habits, were the Dúnedain of Calenardhon, who replaced by Eorl and the Éothéod (i.e., the Rohirrim) five hundred years before the War of the Ring; or the Men of the Mountains (i.e., the Dead Men of Dunharrow), who were replaced by the Dúnedain of Gondor (Calenardhon) around the end of the Second Age. If these Men of the Mountains/Dead Men of Dunharrow were akin to the people of the Second House of the Edain, are they not the original settlers of the place?