The Peoples of Middle-earth by J. R. R. Tolkien Read Free Book Online Page B

knowledge. And their own true name in High-Elven is Noldor, Those that Know; for of the Three Kindreds of the Elves in the beginning, ever the Noldor were distinguished both by their knowledge of things that are and were in this world, and by the desire to know yet more. Yet they were not in fact in any way like to the gnomes of our learned theory, and still less to the gnomes of popular fancy in which they have been confused with dwarves and goblins, and other small creatures of the earth. They belonged to a race high and beautiful, the Elder Children of the World, who now are gone. Tall they were, fairskinned and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, and their voices knew more melodies than any mortal speech that now is heard. Valiant they were and their history was lamentable, and though a little of it was woven with the fates of the Fathers of Men in the Elder Days, their fate is not our fate, and their lives and the lives of Men cross seldom.(8)

    $13. It will be noted also that in this book, as before, Dwarves are spoken of, although dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is dwarfs. It should, of course, be dwarrows; meaning that, if each, singular and plural, had gone its own natural way down the years, unaffected by forgetfulness, as Man and Men have, then dwarf and dwarrows we should have said as surely as we say goose and geese. But we do not talk about dwarf as often as we talk of man, or even goose, and memories are not good enough among men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now relegated (such is their fate and the fall of their great pride) to folktales, where at least some shadow of the truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense tales where they have become mere figures of fun who do not wash their hands.
    But here something of their old character and power (if already diminished) is still glimpsed; these are the Nauglir (9) of old, in whose hearts still smouldered the ancient fires and the embers of their grudge against the Elves; and to mark this dwarves is used, in defiance of correctness and the dictionaries - although actually it is derived from no more learned source than childhood habit. I always had a love of the plurals that did not go according to the simplest rule: loaves, and elves, and wolves, and leaves; and wreaths and houses (which I should have liked better spelt wreathes and houzes); and I persist in hooves and rooves according to ancient authority. I said therefore dwarves however I might see it spelt, feeling that the good folk were a little dignified so; for I never believed the sillier things about them that were presented to my notice. I wish I had known of dwarrows in those days. I should have liked it better still. I have enshrined it now at any rate in my translation of the name of Moria in the Common Speech, which meant The Dwarf-delving, and that I have rendered by The Dwarrow-delf. But Moria itself is an Elvish name of Gnomish kind, and given without love, for the true Gnomes, though they might here and there in the bitter wars against the Enemy and his orc-servants make great fortresses beneath the Earth, were not dwellers in caves or tunnels of choice, but lovers of the green earth and of the lights of heaven; and Moria in their tongue means the Black Chasm.
    But the Dwarves themselves, and this name at any rate was never secret, called it simply Khazad-dum, the Mansion of the Khazad, for such is their own name for their own race, and has been so, since their birth in the deeps of time.(10) The opening remarks of this text certainly suggest that the narrative of The Lord of the Rings had been completed; and this in turn suggests that it was not far removed in time from the renewed work on the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits (i.e. the Prologue). Though it is not much mom than a guess, I incline to think that when my father began it he intended it as a personal and dedicatory 'preface', entirely distinct in nature from the account of the Hobbits, which was a prologue