Due to a peculiarity of the Shire Calendar, the Yuledays always fell on the same days of the week. The last day of the year, 1 Yule, was always a Highday (Friday), while the first day of the following year, 2 Yule, was always a Sterday (Saturday).

The formal use of Yule in the Shire calendar cannot, by definition, predate the foundation of the Shire in III 1601. However, its appearance there represents a survival of an older tradition, and the name ‘Yule’for a midwinter festival was known as far from the Shire as Rohan and Gondor.

Related posts:

1. Yuletide
2. Yuledays
3. Yulemath

Long before the Elves awoke, Yavanna created the Two Trees of Valinor to give light to realm of the Valar. So began a reign of peace in Valinor, but Middle-earth was lit by starlight alone, and Melkor worked in the depths of Utumno in the north of the World. We are not told how long this time lasted, just that ‘the ages drew on’; this period would have lasted roughly 10,500 years. It was during this period that Aulë made the Dwarves, and set them to sleep until the coming of the Elves.

When Oromë discovered that the Elves had awoken at Cuiviénen, great changes came about. The Valar made war on Melkor to protect the Elder Children of Ilúvatar; Utumno was destroyed and Melkor brought in chains to Valinor. The Valar also summoned the Elves to dwell in their land, and many answered this summons.

A period of three ages (about 2,900 years) followed. Melkor was imprisoned in the halls of Mandos, and the Valar and Eldar dwelt together in the light of the Trees. In the darkness of Middle-earth, the Dark Elves who had not journeyed to Valinor still dwelt, and the Fathers of the Dwarves stirred. Men would not appear until some time after the end of the Years of the Trees.

These Years came to an end when Manwë released Melkor from his imprisonment. For a time, the Dark Lord pretended friendship with the Eldar, but he turned back to the darkness. With Ungoliant, he destroyed the Trees, stole the Silmarils and fled back to the north of Middle-earth. Seeking revenge, Fëanor led a great part of the Noldor out of Valinor and back to Beleriand.

So the Years of the Trees came to an end. At this time, the Valar made the Sun and Moon to give light to the World, and the Years of the Sun began, and with them the First Age.

Related posts:

1. Years of the Sun
2. Days of Bliss
3. Long Night

Though the Trees were beyond healing, Laurelin the Golden Tree produced a single burning fruit before its end. The Valar set this golden fruit in a vessel, and sent it aloft piloted by a Maia named Arien. So the Sun rose for the first time in the West as the host of Fingolfin first set foot in the Middle-earth.

From that event began the count of time in Years of the Sun, based on the passage of Arien’s burning vessel through the skies of Arda. The First Age of the Sun lasted less than six hundred years, and saw the Wars of Beleriand, and the ultimate defeat of Morgoth in the War of Wrath. The Second and Third Ages lasted more than three thousand years each, seeing the rise and fall of Númenor, and the ascendancy of Sauron in Middle-earth. Sauron’s great victories and his ultimate defeat form the background of the history of those Ages. Little is known of the Fourth Age or beyond, but the Years of the Sun continued to the present day.

Related posts:

1. Years of the Trees
2. Arien
3. Sun

Aldarion sailed the Great Sea from Númenor to Middle-earth in the Wooden Whale at least twice. After the first voyage, the ship’s prow was adorned with a jewelled eagle, a gift to Aldarion from his friend Círdan.

Related posts:

1. White House of Erendis
2. Vëantur
3. Oiolairë

Related posts:

1. Blotmath
2. Halimath
3. Summerfilth

The ship that sailed from the Grey Havens into the Uttermost West, carrying the Ring-bearers to Aman. Its departure marked the end of the Third Age. On the White Ship sailed Elrond, and Galadriel, and Gandalf the White, who had been the Keepers of the Three Rings. With them went the two Hobbits who had kept Sauron’s Great Ring, Bilbo the Ring-finder and Frodo the Ring-bearer. They were accompanied to the Grey Havens by Gildor Inglorion and many other Elves besides, but whether any of these others went aboard the ship with them is not told. It does seem, though, that Gandalf’s horse Shadowfax did make the journey: we see him waiting at the quayside in The Lord of the Rings, and in his Letters, Tolkien makes it clear that he sailed away with Gandalf.

For most of the travellers, the voyage to the Undying Lands was a journey into the unknown, but not for all. Gandalf had originally come to Middle-earth from Aman, some two thousand years before, and so the White Ship was carrying him home to the place where he was known as Olórin, the wise Maia. For Galadriel, too, it was a homecoming, but of a quite different sort. She had been born in Aman long ago, and in the courts of Tirion she had listened to the words of Fëanor, following him willingly into exile in Middle-earth in defiance of the Valar. For her, the granting of a return from exile was a pardon for her past misdeeds, and a reward for her aid in the War against Sauron.

Related posts:

1. Last Ship
2. Elven-rings
3. Ring of Water

Background

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Westron was presented as having been completely translated by English. This had certain important implications: first of all, proper names with derivations somewhat evident to speakers of Westron had been translated, to preserve the effect. Thus, names like Baggins, Bagshot Row, Peregrin, Rivendell etc., are presented as not the actual names. (For example, Meriadoc Brandybuck’s actual name is supposed to have been Kalimac Brandagamba, short Kali (meaning jolly, merry). ‘Meriadoc’, short ‘Merry’, is designed to maintain the reference to merriness contained in the original name. Likewise Peregrin Took’s actual name was Razanur Tûc, short Razar (name of a small apple). ‘Peregrin’, short ‘Pippin’ contained both the actual meaning of the full name (traveler, stranger) and the reference to an apple). Sam Gamgee was actually named Ban Galpsi, short for Banazir Galbasi. The ending of the ‘true’ Hobbit name Bilbo was also changed: in Westron it was Bilba, but Tolkien changed this to -o because -a is usually a female ending in English.

Placenames and other features were also presented as having been translated from an original form: Rivendell (Sindarin Imladris, “cloven valley”) was actually called Karningul, and Bag End was actually called Labin-nec, after Labingi, the real form of Baggins. In some cases the explanations became quite involved, such as the river Brandywine (Sindarin Baranduin, “golden-brown river”) was actually called Branda-nîn, a punning Westron name meaning “border-water”, which was later punned again as Bralda-hîm meaning “heady ale”.

The translation went one step further by also changing all languages akin to Westron. Rohirric, the language of the Rohirrim was translated by Anglo-Saxon, as Rohirric is an archaic relative of Westron (since the Edain from whose speech Westron is derived were related to the ancestors of the Rohirrim) much as Anglo-Saxon is an archaic relative of English. Similarly, the tongue of Dale, from which came the names of the Dwarves of Durin’s house, was translated by Old Norse, a language related to Anglo-Saxon and modern English as Dalish was related to Rohirric and Westron.

This utter translation of Westron by English was taken so far that some sources that should give actual Westron have been turned to English too. For instance, in Moria, an illustration of the runic text on Balin’s gravestone is given. The text is said to mean “Balin Son of Fundin, Lord of Moria” in both Khuzdûl and Westron… but while the first part of the inscription seems to really be a bit of Khuzdûl (Moria is rendered as “Khazad-dûm”), the second part is actually plain English, just written in certar.

Outside the context of the story, it is clear that most of the “original” forms in Westron or other languages were devised by Tolkien long after the English “translations” were chosen. Several of the Westron forms given above were not published in Tolkien’s lifetime. Tolkien never worked out Westron to the same extent as Quenya and Sindarin or even Adûnaic.

The Structure of Westron

We know very little about Westron, for the simple reason that Tolkien has rendered it into English almost everywhere! A few words of genuine Westron are given in Appendix F to LotR and (relatively) many more in The Peoples of Middle-earth. Tolkien even translated the names of the Hobbits. There were never any hobbits called Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry; their real names were Maura, Ban, Razar and Kali. The word hobbit itself is just a rendering of the actual Third Age word kuduk (derived from Old English holbytla “hole-dweller” the way kuduk is believed to descend from archaic kûd-dûkan of this meaning, the form kûd-dûkan still being preserved in Rohirric). Maura (“Frodo”) and his friends would not have known the word “hobbit” as such; they said kuduk.

Concerning the phonology and structure of Westron, David Salo observes (private communication): “The [consonant] sounds of late Adunaic and Westron are almost the same. They have in common p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, ng, r, ph, th, s, z, h, y, l. Westron is said in LotR to have the palatals ch, sh, but only sh was exemplified in the material. Westron also has hr-, hl-. No w is exemplified in Westron, but Westron has v, which Adunaic did not. Conceivably Westron could have changed w > v. Westron words are not entirely dissimilar from Adunaic: they have what could be triconsonantal root words (gamba ‘he-goat’, tapuk ‘rabbit’, galab ‘game’, laban ‘bag’, narag ‘dwarf’, zilib or zilbi ‘butter’, and a large number of biconsonantals: rama ‘cottager’, zara ‘old’, bana “half”, rapha ‘burr’.”

The vowels constitute a classical five-vowel system: short a, e, i, o, u and long â, î, ô, û; long ê is not attested in any actual word, but its existence is implied by a footnote in Appendix E. (It is there stated that some speakers of Westron used ei and ou, “more or less as in English say no”, instead of ê, ô – this pronunciation, though “fairly widespread”, was held to be incorrect and rustic. Needless to say, this was the usual pronunciation among the Hobbits.) Reportedly, Westron also had certain reduction vowels.

Westron did not possess the Quenya sounds ty, hy; Gondorian speakers of High-elven substituted ch (as in church) and sh. Neither did Westron have ch as in German ach; see UT:319. Therefore, pure Sindarin Rochand, Rochan became Rohan in Gondorian pronunciation.

One late phonological change is mentioned in PM:320: Double (long) consonants were reduced to single ones medially between vowels, tunnas “guard” being pronounced tunas (but not normally so spelt). Consonants in certain combinations were altered; tunnas itself represents earlier tudnas.

Endings of Westron

An agental ending -a is seen in such words as pûta “blower”, batta “talker”. The ending -a was also a masculine ending (PM:46), at least in the Hobbit dialect. Tolkien, when translating the Red Book, Anglicized such names by changing this ending to -o, e.g. “Bilbo” for genuine Hobbitish Bilba. The endings -o and -e were feminine; Tolkien may have substituted -a for -o.

The plural ending seems to be -in, as in cûbuc “hobbit” pl. cûbugin (PM:49 – cûbuc changed to kuduk in the published LotR). Tolkien considered several plural endings before he settled on -in, such as -a, -il, -en. (The idea of unvoiced plosives becoming voiced before this plural ending, as in cûbuc/cûbugin, was apparently dropped later.)

It seems that Westron, like the Scandinavian languages, employs a suffix instead of an independent definite article: Sûza “Shire”, Sûzat “The Shire”.

The original, archaic Westron seems to have had case endings, but by the end of the Third Age, the endings had been lost. Nargian in Phurunargian “Dwarrowdelf” is a fossilized form of the genitive plural of narag “dwarf”. David Salo theorizes: “Since Adunaic has no true genitive, one has to suppose that over the course of the Third Age, Adunaic was transformed (via agglutination of suffixes) into a full-fledged case language, and then subsequently lost case endings again. Nargian could be *nargii (a plural stem, incorporating the old Adunaic ending -i) + an, the old [Adûnaic] ‘genitive’ marker, now postposed instead of preposed.”

The words raza “stranger”, razan “foreign” seem to argue the existence of an adjectival ending -n.

The past participle may have the ending -nin.

We know no Westron pronouns, but we know something about them: “The Westron tongue made in the pronouns of the second person (and often also in those of the third) a distinction, independent of number, between ‘familiar’ and ‘deferential’ forms. It was, however, one of the peculiarities of Shire-usage that the deferential forms had gone out of colloquial use. They lingered only among the villagers, especially of the West-farthing, who used them as endearments. This was one of the things referred to when people of Gondor spoke of the strangeness of Hobbit-speech. Peregrin Took, for instance, in his first few days in Minas Tirith used the familiar forms to people of all ranks, including the Lord Denethor himself. This may have amused the aged Steward, but it must have astonished his servants. No doubt this free use of the familiar forms helped to spread the popular rumour that Peregrin was a person of very high rank in his own country.” (Appendix F) It proved impossible to represent these Westron pronominal distinctions adequately in in Tolkien’s English translation of the Red Book.

Notes

The parts concerning the technical aspects of the language originates from the brilliant work of Helge Kåre Fauskanger and his Ardalambion project.

Related posts:

1. Common Speech
2. Hobbit-speech
3. Kuduk

Related posts:

1. Afterlithe
2. Urimë
3. Halimath

The First Battle (29 years before the first rising of the Sun) After his return to Middle-earth, Morgoth wasted no time in preparing an assault on its peoples. Less than twenty years after his return, he launched an overwhelming attack on the Sindar and their allies. In the east, the Sindar and the Elves of Ossiriand succeeded in destroying the Orc-army at great cost, with the aid of the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. In the west, though, the Orcs were undefeated, and the battle ended with Círdan besieged in the Havens of the Falas. At this time Doriath was surrounded by the impenetrable Girdle of Melian to guard against future attacks.

Dagor-nuin-Giliath (shortly after the First Battle) Soon after the First Battle, Fëanor and his Noldor returned to Middle-earth, and made camp in the land of Mithrim, between the arms of the Mountains of Shadow. Hoping for a rapid victory, Morgoth sent an army from the north, while the Orcs that were besieging Círdan turned back to assault Fëanor from the south. The Orcs greatly outnumbered the Elves, and the battle lasted for ten days, but ultimately Fëanor was victorious and the Orc-armies were destroyed. This battle was fought in the darkness before the rising of the Moon or Sun, and so became known as Dagor-nuin-Giliath, the ‘Battle-under-Stars’. Dagor Aglareb (I 60) After his crushing defeat in the Dagor-nuin-Giliath, Morgoth spent time preparing his next attack on Beleriand. In the sixtieth year since the rising of the Sun, he once again launched an assault from the north, sending armies to invade Dorthonion from the west and east. The forces of the Noldor were ready, and both of the Orcs’great armies were destroyed by the Elves. This became known as the ‘Glorious Battle’- Dagor Aglareb in Elvish – and saw the setting of the Siege of Angband by the Noldor.

With that siege in place, Morgoth attempted no new major attacks for the next four centuries. Dagor Bragollach (I 455 to I 456) Morgoth used the centuries of Siege to prepare an immense retaliation against his enemies. One winter’s night, rivers of flame flowed out of the North, and vast armies of Orcs, led by Balrogs and the Dragon Glaurung, swept away the besieging Noldor. With the Siege of Angband broken, the forces of the Elves and Edain were scattered, and few of their defences remained. The battle was named for the fires that had issued from Angband: Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame.

Nirnaeth Arnoediad (I 471) After the disaster of the Dagor Bragollach, the Elves and Edain rallied their forces and planned an overwhelming counterattack against Angband. Forces from the west under Fingon, and the east under Maedhros, were set to come together and take revenge for the Bragollach. Those plans came close to success, but through ill luck and treachery the attack finally failed, and Morgoth claimed a crushing victory. Because of the dreadful losses in that battle, it was known as Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

The War of Wrath (I 545 to I 587) After the Nirnaeth, resistance to Morgoth was limited to a few hidden cities and realms, and these were destroyed one after the other until only a cluster of refugees remained, driven into the far south of Beleriand at the Mouths of Sirion. It seemed that Morgoth’s forces were unstoppable, but the lord of the last remaining free Elves and Men – Eärendil son of Tuor – had a last desperate hope. With the aid of a Silmaril’s power, he succeeded in crossing the Great Sea and pleading for help from the Valar themselves. The Valar accepted his plea, and sent an immense force into Middle-earth. The resulting War of Wrath (also called the Great Battle) was cataclysmic, rending the earth and destroying most of Beleriand. At its end, Angband lay in ruins, and the captured Morgoth was cast out from the World. So ended the Wars of Beleriand, and with them the First Age of the World, and the lands of Beleriand themselves.

Related posts:

1. Glorious Battle
2. Dagor-nuin-Giliath
3. Siege of Angband

Background

By the early six century of the First Age, Morgoth had become mighty and uncontested in Middle-earth, not least because of the strife among the Ñoldor and was master of all of the north and the Beleriand, save for the havens in Arvernien. The mariner Eärendil, by the guidance of a Silmaril which he wore on his forehead, searched and came to Valinor, on behalf of the two kindreds (that of Elves and Men), begging the Valar to pardon and aid the enthralled Elves and Men of Middle-earth.

The Battle

The Valar were moved by Eärendil’s plea, and along with the Vanyar and the remaining Ñoldor in Aman, came to Middle-earth in a mighty host. Of the Teleri of Alqualondë, they granted the use of their ships to the powers of Aman, but none would aid the Ñoldor in Middle-earth, remembering the Kinslaying of their people long ago. The great force of Aman marched across Beleriand, and met the terrible forces of Morgoth in the plains of Anfauglith.

The host of the Valar utterly destroyed the Orc armies of Morgoth and most of the Balrogs, all save a few who fled and hid themselves in the deep places of the world. While the Three Houses of Men or the Edain fought with the Valar, many other Men from the East fought for the forces of Morgoth and were either destroyed or fled back to the far eastern parts of Middle-earth where they became Kings of lesser men. Facing final defeat, Morgoth, in a last desperate effort, released his last ultimate weapon, the winged Dragons, which had never been seen before, and the terror of that onslaught was like a great storm, and they drove the Valar back.

At that moment Eärendil came with his sky-ship Vingilot, along with the Eagles of Manwë led by Thorondor. In the skies above Angband, they contested with the dragons, slaying most of them. Eärendil himself slew their captain, the mighty Ancalagon the Black, who broke the towers of Thangorodrim in his fall. (A prophecy given in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth in Morgoth’s Ring gives the slaying of Ancalagon to Túrin instead.)

Aftermath

Morgoth was finally captured in the deepest dungeon of Angband and bound again with his old chain Angainor; the two Silmarils still in his possession were taken by the Maia Eönwë, the herald of Manwë and guarded (whence they were later stolen by Maedhros and Maglor) and Morgoth’s crown was beaten into a collar for him. In the end the Valar thrust him “through the Door of Night, beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void”, where he remains until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom, and those doors are forever guarded by Ëarendil. Only then shall he be utterly destroyed.

The wreckage of the war was immense; most of the land west of the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) was laid waste and soon after sank beneath the waves. The remaining elves were bidden by Ëonwë to return with him to the lands of Aman. Most of the Elves went into the West, while others still refused the summons and rather journeyed eastward where they would become lords of the remaining Eldar or those elves who still dwelt in the east, such as the Silvan Elves. Galadriel and Celeborn as well as Elrond were among these.

For those men of the Edain, who fought for the host of the Valar, they were granted to them the land of Númenor (in the full Quenya form Nùmenórë). This land was neither of Aman nor Middle-earth, but was indeed closer to Aman.

Related posts:

1. Blessed
2. Dagor-nuin-Giliath
3. Wars of Beleriand