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.
