To Sauron's Isle...

In my previous post, we saw how Finrod Felagund resolved to fulfill his oath to Barahir and accompany Beren on his Quest to wrest the Silmaril from Morgoth's Iron Crown and together with ten companions they left Nargothrond and went north to Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of Werewolves, where Sauron was lord. In the woods along the way, they waylaid a band of wandering Orcs, and taking their gear, they were by the arts of Felagund made as hideous as the Orcs, and thus they continued their journey. At length they left the mild lands of Beleriand and came to the hither regions, dark and morrowless, about Taur-nu-Fuin and the upper vales of Sirion, and there amidst the river there stood a hill upon which was set Minas Tirith, built of old by Finrod Felagund himself, but which now served as a watchtower for Morgoth, under the dominion of Sauron.

Now in that hill was the abode

of one most evil; and the road

that from Beleriand thither came

he watched with sleepless eyes of flame.

(From the North there led no other way,

save east where the Gorge of Aglon lay,

and that dark path of hurrying dread

which only in need the Orcs would tread

through Deadly Nightshade's awful gloom

where Taur-na-Fuin's [Taur-nu-Fuin] branches loom;

and Aglon led to Doriath,

and Fëanor's sons watched o'er that path.)

Men called him Thû [Sauron], and as a god

in after days beneath his rod

bewildered bowed to him, and made

his ghastly temples in the shade.

Not yet by Men enthralled adored,

now was he Morgoth's mightiest lord,

Master of Wolves, whose shivering howl

for ever echoed in the hills, and foul

enchantments and dark sigaldry*

did weave and wield. In glamoury*

that necromancer held his hosts

of phantoms and of wandering ghosts,

of misbegotten or spell-wronged

monsters that about him thronged,

working his bidding dark and vile:

the werewolves of the Wizard's Isle.

From Thû [Sauron] their coming was not hid;

and though beneath the eaves they slid

of the forest's gloomy-hanging boughs

he saw them afar, and wolves did rouse:

''Go! fetch me those sneaking Orcs,'' he said,

''that fare thus strangely, as if in dread,

and do not come, as all Orcs use

and are commanded, to bring me news

of all their deeds, to me, to Thû.''

From his tower he gazed, and in him grew

suspicion and a brooding thought,

waiting, leering, till they were brought.

Now ringed about with wolves they stand,

and fear their doom. Alas! the land,

the land of Narog left behind!

Foreboding evil weights their mind,

as downcast, halting, they must go

and cross the stony bridge of woe

to Wizard's Isle, and to the throne

there fashioned of blood-darkened stone.

(The Lay of Leithian, Canto VII).

**These strange words are listed in the Word Study section of The Ring of Words. ''Sigaldry,'' meaning ''enchantment, sorcery'' is recorded only in Middle English texts until Tolkien revived it. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word sigalder, meaning a ''charm or incantation.'' The Middle English form sigaldrie appears in one of the manuscripts of the Ancrene Riwle, the medieval religious work edited by Tolkien. ''Glamoury'' means ''occult knowledge, magic, necromancy'' It is an odd word, related (somehow) to the word ''grammar.'' The Oxford English Dictionary explains that in the Middle Ages, the Latin word grammatica chiefly meant the study and knowledge of the Latin language. Since all academic and Ecclesiastical learning was done in Latin (as it ought still, in my opinion), the word eventually came to mean any learning in general, and this encompassed also the ''secret'' knowledge of occult things and astrology.