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Haunting Spirit
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/redeye.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: Who knows their trolls?
I don't know. Am I crazy? How are others reading this?
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Quote:<hr> "There as the
sun westered on the sixth day, and the shadow of Ered Wethrin grew dark, Huor fell pierced with a venomed arrow in his eye, and all the valiant Men of Hador were slain about him in a heap; and the Orcs hewed their heads and piled them as a mound of gold in the
sunset.
Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried:
' Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!' Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, for the
Orcs grappled with him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. Then Gothmog bound him and dragged him to Angband with mockery.
Thus ended the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, as the sun went down beyond the sea. Night fell in Hithlum, and there came a great storm of wind out of the West." (All emphasis mine, obviously)<hr></blockquote>
Sorry for the repitition and the long quote, but maybe others who don't have the Silma handy can get in on the action without having to look it up.
From the first paragraph, it seems clear that the sun was setting as Huor bought it. After that, Hurin slays seventy. Seventy trolls, not counting Orcs?. I would read it that way, arguing that his battle cry was directed at the trolls. But even taking the conservative view, at a rate of one troll or orc per minute, it would take him roughly an hour to do all that hacking. Wouldn't the sun be way down by that time? Not even counting Gothmog taking him, binding, him, and dragging him back across the plain of Ard-galen to Angband all the way from the Fens of Serech.
So in my reading, the chronology goes something like this:
-Huor and the rest of the guys buy it at sunset.
-Hurin slays trolls through the night. By morning, all are dead or else have been forced to retreat.
-Then come the Orcs. Hurin slays so many of those over the course of the morning that their corpse are piled up and finally he's overcome by the sheer numbers of the dead.
-He's bound by Gothmog, who transports him to Angband, finally reaching the fortress later that day as the sun is going down again.
I can't understand why Hurin would be crying "Day shall come again!" when it's already daytime. I tried to get a literal translation of the Elvish, without complete success, unfortunately, but I did find that "aur", the root that "Aure" is evidently derived from, means not only "day" but can also be interpreted as "sunlight" and "morning". Instead of supposing that Hurin is making some abstract metaphorical reference, why not take his desperate and defiant battle cry at its literal meaning?
Further, trolls are conspicuously absent during other daylight action. They're not mentioned when Gothmog meets Fingon (another Balrog helps him out on that occasion), nor are they mentioned in the laundry list of forces that empty out of Angband on the morning of the sixth day (wolves, wolfriders, Balrogs, and dragons all do get a mention).
I reiterate my argument that this paragraph isn't nearly definitive enough to clinch the argument that daylight trolls existed pre-Third Age.
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Edited by: <A HREF=http://www.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_profile&u=00000005>Mister Underhill</A> at: 10/2/00 7:00:57 pm