Middle-earth seen by the barbarians: The complete collection including a previously unpublished essay (3 page)

1. Migration patterns of the Southern Atani (dark dotted lines) and the Drúedain (full red lines)
   

Together they carried on northwards, passing through the Gap of Rohan. Again, many preferred to leave that trail, finding that ‘
the Minhiriath and the western half of Enedwaith between the Greyflood and the Isen were still covered with dense forest
’
(
DM
)
which provided good living grounds. This reconstruction of prehistory is supported by the notion that many people from the forests ‘
of the shore-lands south of the Ered Luin, especially in Minhiriath, were as later historians recognized the kin of the Folk of Haleth.
’
(
DM
)
They became herd-tenders, presumably of sheep and goats, since horses would have been of little use in the forests. Also, some Drúedain chose this territory to become ‘
a fairly numerous but barbarous fisher-folk
[that]
dwelt between the mouths of the Gwathló and the Angren [Isen]
’
(
GC
)
but chiefly ‘i
n the marshlands around the mouths of Greyflood and Isen’
.
(
FI
)
They did not live well, though, and in the Second Age, they had been reduced
to ‘a few tribes of ‘“Wild Men”, fishers and fowlers, but akin in race and speech to the Drúedain of the woods of Anórien
.’
(
FI
)
.

Such pre-Haladin and Drúedain as remained on the trail advanced into Eriador. There they met other wanderers: the rhúnedainic Bórrim, or people of Bór, who were not related to them. They seem to have dwelt for a while in southern Rhovanion where they had contact with the Entwives: ‘
many men learned the crafts [of agriculture] of the Entwives and honoured them greatly
.’
(
TT
)
Hence, when the Bórrim arrived in the West, they were known as skilled ‘
tillers of the earth.
’
(
GA
)

They left Rhovanion on the northern path between the Misty (Hithaeglir) and the Iron Mountains (Ered Engrin) where they may have met the Forodwaith (see chapter
II
). In 463 F.A. some had finally crossed ‘
Eriador, and passing north about the Eryd Luin entered into Lothlann.
’ (
GA
) Others stayed behind: ‘
Of the people of Bór, it is said, came the most ancient of the Men that dwelt in the north of Eriador in the Second Age and … after-days.
’
(
GA
)
Unfortunately, we do not know who are these later descendants of the ‘most ancient’ Men of Eriador. Is this a reference to the Hillmen of Rhudaur?

In the fourth century of the First Age, the still migrating part of the Haladin reached the Ered Lindon and passed into Beleriand to enter recorded Elvish history.
^[1]
The situation in the White Mountains worsened meanwhile as the Men of Darkness (see chapter
III
) hunted the Drúedain and brought them almost to extinction: ‘
from the East … had come the tall Men who drove them from the White Mountains, and they were wicked at heart.
’
(
TD
)
Some escaped into the forests of Anórien and, down the Cape of Andrast, into of Drúwaith Iaur. There they may have survived even into the late Third Age.
(
TD
)

The remaining pre-Haladin suffered as well. Apparently they were driven out of most dales of the Ered Nimrais. Hence, ‘
in the Dark Years others
[of the pre-Haladin]
removed to the southern dales of the Misty Mountains; and thence some … passed into the empty lands as far north as the Barrow-downs. From them came the Men of Bree.
’
(
LP
)

The sources do not agree when this may have happened. Historians used the term ‘Dark Years’ to refer to the Second Age. But the Bree-folk claimed that they had already ‘
survived the turmoils of the Elder Days
’
(
FR
)
in Bree-country, which, if taken for granted, should mean that their ancestors had settled Eriador already during the Long Peace of the First Age.

^[1]
  A few Drúedain may have joined them. Sador, of Húrin’s household in Dor-Lómin, was said to be a Drúadan in some notes, but this notion never entered narrative text.

1. Migration patterns of the Bórrim
   

1. Migration of the pre-Bëorrim (green dotted line) and the pre-Marachrim (full red line)
   

The Northern Atani had taken a completely different path. It was said of them that from early on, ‘
they were ever at war … with Men who had made
[Morgoth]
their god and believed that they could render him no more pleasing service than to destroy the “renegades” with every kind of cruelty
.’
(
DM
)
The first other Free People who became aware of their presence, though, were the Dwarves. Somewhere in northern Rhún this happened, for ‘
in ancient days the Naugrim dwelt in many mountains of Middle-earth, and there they met mortal Men (they say) long ere the Eldar knew them.
’
(
NE
)
Thus it came to pass that their earliest language, Atani, showed distinct influences of Khuzdul.

Myth-making of the Northern Atani commences at the shores of the Sea of Rhún. During a prolonged settlement there, they divided into two folks of distinct language, phenotype, and culture. The Greater Folk of the pre-Marachrim ‘
long dwelt … by the shores of a sea too wide to see across; it had no tides, but was visited by great storms. … They lived in the north-east, in the woods that there came near to the shores.
’ The other part, the Lesser Folk of the pre-Bëorrim, had advanced further and ‘
had reached the same sea before them, and dwelt at the feet of the high hills to the south-west. They were thus some two hundred miles apart, going by water.
’
(
PR
)
This was the land that would once be known as Dorwinion (see chapter
V
).

Owing to the distance between them, even when the pre-Marachrim ‘
developed a craft of boat-building’,
they and their opposites across the Inland Sea ‘
did not often meet and exchange tidings. Their tongues had already diverged … though they remained friends of acknowledged kinship
.’
(
PR
)
Maybe their generally darker, sometimes even swarthy complexion allows to conclude that the pre-Bëorrim had been ‘
mingling in the past with Men of other kinds
’
(
DM
)
. This is even a conceivable reason for why their language seemed to the pre-Marachrim to contain ‘
many elements that were alien in character.’
(
DM
)
Such an early blend of Dúnedain and Rhúnedain may have been behind the origin of the indigenous inhabitants of the territory that would one day become Dorwinion, see chapter
V
.

1. The Northern Atani
   

This trickle of information prevented the pre-Marachrim from learning on time that one day, ‘
the Lesser Folk had fled from the threat of the Servants of the Dark and gone on westward, while they had lain hidden in their woods.
’
(
PR
)
Much later, the pre-Marachrim followed their trail, passing by the Hithaeglir/Misty Mountains in the North, close to the dreadful Ered Engrin and yet outside of Morgoth’s Shadow. But many groups of both peoples stayed behind, and when the shrinking vanguard led by Bëor and Marach, respectively, reached Beleriand in the fourth century, ‘
in Eriador and Rhovanion (especially in the northern parts) their kindred must already have occupied much of the land.
’
(
DM
)
This assumption is supported by the notion that the Northmen of Rhovanion ‘
appear to have been most nearly akin to the third and greatest of the peoples of the Elf-friends, ruled by the House of Hador
’.
(
CE
)

In Eriador, the ancestors of the Middle Men gathered in places where later would be the major population centres of Arnor: ‘
about Lake Evendim, in the North Downs and the Weather Hills, and in the lands between as far as the Brandywine, west of which they often wandered though they did not dwell there.
’
(
AE
,
DM
)
There, instead, were later found ‘
many, it would seem, in origin kin of the Folk of Bëor, though some were kin of the Folk of Hador
’.
(
DM
, cf. also
AE
)
, aside of Bórrim.

Examining the natives of Eriador, the Númenóreans of the Second Age would one day assume that ‘
some of their ancestors may indeed have been fugitives from the Atani
’
(
DM
)
, i. e. proper Edain. Then they recalled that according to the Elves, some Hadorians had in fear of the Evil Power in Angband turned away from their encampment in Beleriand; ‘
and they went back over the mountains into Eriador, and were forgotten.
’
(
S
)

That there were real Edain among them ‘
may have been actually true of those Men in Middle-earth whom the returning Númenóreans first met …; but other Men of the North … can only have been akin as descending from peoples of which the Atani had been the vanguard
.’
(
DM
)
Those others constituted ‘
their laggard kindred [who] were either in Eriador, some settled, some still wandering, or else had never passed the Misty Mountains and were scattered
’
(
DM
)
in Rhovanion.

To them added the deserters of the Edain who turned their back to Beleriand when ‘
Bereg led a thousand of the people of Bëor away southwards, and they passed out of the songs of those days
’.
(
S
)
Some people of Marach, too, who ‘
went back over the mountains into Eriador, and are forgotten
.’
They would come back into history at some darker spots.