Morgoth's Ring (77 page)

producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.

But even before this wickedness of Morgoth was suspected the Wise in the Elder Days taught always that the Orcs were not

'made' by Melkor, and therefore were not in their origin evil.

They might have become irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men), but they remained within the Law. That is, that though of necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defence of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost.* This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded.

It is true, of course, that Morgoth held the Orcs in dire thraldom; for in their corruption they had lost almost all possibility of resisting the domination of his will. So great indeed did its pressure upon them become ere Angband fell that, if he turned his thought towards them, they were conscious of his 'eye' wherever they might be; and when Morgoth was at last removed from Arda the Orcs that survived in the West were scattered, leaderless and almost witless, and were for a long time without control or purpose.

This servitude to a central will that reduced the Orcs almost to an ant-like life was seen even more plainly in the Second and Third Ages under the tyranny of Sauron, Morgoth's chief lieutenant. Sauron indeed achieved even greater control over his Orcs than Morgoth had done. He was, of course, operating on a smaller scale, and he had no enemies so great and so fell as were the Noldor in their might in the Elder Days. But he had also inherited from those days difficulties, such as the diversity of the Orcs in breed and language, and the feuds among them; while in many places in Middle-earth, after the fall of Thangorodrim and during the concealment of Sauron, the Orcs recovering from their helplessness had set up petty realms of their own and (* [footnote to the text] Few Orcs ever did so in the Elder Days, and at no time would any Orc treat with any Elf. For one thing Morgoth had achieved was to convince the Orcs beyond refutation that the Elves were crueller than themselves, taking captives only for 'amuse-ment', or to eat them (as the Orcs would do at need).) had become accustomed to independence. Nonetheless Sauron in time managed to unite them all in unreasoning hatred of the Elves and of Men who associated with them; while the Orcs of his own trained armies were so completely under his will that they would sacrifice themselves without hesitation at his command.* And he proved even more skilful than his Master also in the corruption of Men who were beyond the reach of the Wise, and in reducing them to a vassalage, in which they would march with the Orcs, and vie with them in cruelty and destruction.

It is thus probably to Sauron that we may look for a solution of the problem of chronology. Though of immensely smaller native power than his Master, he remained less corrupt, cooler and more capable of calculation. At least in the Elder Days, and before he was bereft of his lord and fell into the folly of imitating him, and endeavouring to become himself supreme Lord of Middle-earth. While Morgoth still stood, Sauron did not seek his own supremacy, but worked and schemed for another, desiring the triumph of Melkor, whom in the beginning he had adored. He thus was often able to achieve things, first conceived by Melkor, which his master did not or could not complete in the furious haste of his malice.

We may assume, then, that the idea of breeding the Orcs came from Melkor, not at first maybe so much for the provision of servants or the infantry of his wars of destruction, as for the defilement of the Children and the blasphemous mockery of the designs of Eru. The details of the accomplishment of this wickedness were, however, left mainly to the subtleties of Sauron. In that case the conception in mind of the Orcs may go far back into the night of Melkor's thought, though the beginning of their actual breeding must await the awakening of Men.

When Melkor was made captive, Sauron escaped and lay hid in Middle-earth; and it can in this way be understood how the breeding of the Orcs (no doubt already begun) went on with increasing speed during the age when the Noldor dwelt in Aman; so that when they returned to Middle-earth they found it already infested with this plague, to the torment of all that dwelt (* [footnote to the text] But there remained one flaw in his control, inevitable. In the kingdom of hate and fear, the strongest thing is hate.

All his Orcs hated one another, and must be kept ever at war with some 'enemy' to prevent them from slaying one another.) there, Elves or Men or Dwarves. It was Sauron, also, who secretly repaired Angband for the help of his Master when he returned;(6) and there the dark places underground were already manned with hosts of the Orcs before Melkor came back at last, as Morgoth the Black Enemy, and sent them forth to bring ruin upon all that was fair. And though Angband has fallen and Morgoth is removed, still they come forth from the lightless places in the darkness of their hearts, and the earth is withered under their pitiless feet.

This then, as it may appear, was my father's final view of the question: Orcs were bred from Men, and if 'the conception in mind of the Orcs may go far back into the night of Melkor's thought' it was Sauron who, during the ages of Melkor's captivity in Aman, brought into being the black armies that were available to his Master when he returned.

But, as always, it is not quite so simple. Accompanying one copy of the typescript of this essay are some pages in manuscript for which my father used the blank reverse sides of papers provided by the publishers dated 10 November 1969. These pages carry two notes on the 'Orcs'

essay: one, discussing the spelling of the word orc, is given on p. 422; the other is a note arising from something in the essay which is not indicated, but which is obviously the passage on p. 417 discussing the puppet-like nature inevitable in creatures brought into being by one of the great Powers themselves: the note was intended to stand in relation to the words 'But the Orcs were not of this kind'.

The orks, it is true, sometimes appear to have been reduced to a condition very similar, though there remains actually a profound difference. Those orks who dwelt long under the immediate attention of his will - as garrisons of his strongholds or elements of armies trained for special purposes in his war-designs - would act like herds, obeying instantly, as if with one will, his commands even if ordered to sacrifice their lives in his service. And as was seen when Morgoth was at last overthrown and cast out, those orks that had been so absorbed scattered helplessly, without purpose either to flee or to fight, and soon died or slew themselves.

Other originally independent creatures, and Men among them (but neither Elves nor Dwarves), could also be reduced to a like condition. But 'puppets', with no independent life or will, would simply cease to move or do anything at all when the will of their maker was brought to nothing. In any case the number of orks that were thus 'absorbed' was always only a small part of their total. To hold them in absolute servitude required a great expense of will. Morgoth though in origin possessed of vast power was finite; and it was this expenditure upon the orks, and still more upon the other far more formidable creatures in his service, that in the event so dissipated his powers of mind that Morgoth's overthrow became possible. Thus the greater part of the orks, though under his orders and the dark shadow of their fear of him, were only intermittently objects of his immediate thought and concern, and while that was removed they relapsed into independence and became conscious of their hatred of him and his tyranny. Then they might neglect his orders, or engage in

Here the text breaks off. But the curious thing is that rough drafting for the second paragraph of this note (written on the same paper bearing the same date) begins thus:

But Men could (and can still) be reduced to such a condition.

'Puppets' would simply cease to move or 'live' at all, when not set in motion by the direct will of their maker. In any case, though the number of orks at the height of Morgoth's power, and still after his return from captivity, seems to have been very great, those who were 'absorbed' were always a small part of the total.

The words that I have italicised deny an essential conception of the essay.

The other note reads thus:

Orcs.

This spelling was taken from Old English. The word seemed, in itself, very suitable to the creatures that 1 had in mind. But the Old English orc in meaning - so far as that is known - is not suitable.(7) Also the spelling of what, in the later more organized linguistic situation, must have been a Common Speech form of a word or group of similar words should be ork. If only because of spelling difficulties in modern English: an adjective orc + ish becomes necessary, and orcish will not do.(8) In any future publication I shall use ork.

In text IX (the brief writing in which my father declared the theory of Elvish origin to be certain) he spelt the word Orks, and said 'so I shall spell it in The Silmarillion'. In the present essay, obviously later than text IX, it is spelt Orcs; but now, in 1969 or later, he asserted again that it must be Orks.

NOTES.

1. See text VII, p. 406. - On one copy of the text my father pencilled against this sentence the names Eruseni, Melkorseni.

2. 'legends that have come down to us from our earliest days'; this purports then to be an Elvish writing. Sauron is spoken of subsequently as a being of the past ('This servitude to a central will

... was seen even more plainly in the Second and Third Ages under the tyranny of Sauron', p. 419); but in the last sentence of the essay the Orcs are a plague that still afflicts the world.

3. The time of the Awakening of Men is now placed far back; cf. text II (p. 378), The March of the Eldar is through great Rains? Men awake in an Isle amid the floods'; 'The coming of Men will therefore be much further back'; 'Men must awake while Melkor is still in [Middle-earth] - because of their Fall. Therefore in some period during the Great March' (see p. 385 note 14). In the chronology of the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals the Great March began in the Year of the Trees 1105 (p. 82), and the foremost companies of the Eldar came to the shores of the Great Sea in 1125; Men awoke in Hildorien in the year of the first rising of the Sun, which was the Year of the Trees 1500. Thus if the Awakening of Men is placed even very late in the period of the Great March of the Eldar it will be set back by more than 3500

Years of the Sun. See further p. 430 note 5.

4. Cf. text IX, p. 414: 'But always among them [Orcs] (as special servants and spies of Melkor, and as leaders) there must have been numerous corrupted minor spirits who assumed similar bodily shapes'; also text VIII, p. 410.

5. The footnote at this point, stating that 'Boldog, for instance, is a name that occurs many times in the tales of the War', and was perhaps not a personal name, is curious. Boldog appears several times in the Lay of Leithian as the name of the Orc-captain who led a raid into Doriath (references in the Index to The Lays of Beleriand); he reappears in the Quenta (IV.113), but is not mentioned thereafter. I do not know of any other reference to an Orc named Boldog.

6. On the later story that Angband was built by Melkor in the ancient days and that it was commanded by Sauron see p. 156, $12. There has been no reference to the repairing of Angband against Morgoth's return, and cf. the last narrative development in the Quenta Silmarillion of the story of his return (p. 295, $14): Morgoth and Ungoliant 'were drawing near to the ruins of Angband where his great western stronghold had been.'

7. See p. 124.

8. 'orcish will not do': because it would be pronounced 'orsish'. The Orkish language was so spelt in The Lord of the Rings from the First Edition.

XI.

This concluding text, entitled Aman, is a clear manuscript written with little hesitation or correction. I had regarded it as an independent essay, and in doubt where best to place it had left it to the end; but when this book had been fully completed and prepared for publication I realised that it stands in fact in very close relationship to the manuscript of Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.

That manuscript opens with an introductory section (given in the typescript version that my father subsequently made, pp. 304 - 5), beginning with the statement that some Men believed that their hroar were not by nature short-lived, but had become so by the malice of Melkor. I had not observed the significance of some lines at the head of this first page of the Athrabeth, which my father had struck through: these lines begin with the words 'the hroa, and it would live on, a witless body, not even a beast but a monster', and end '... Death itself, in either agony or horror, would with Men enter into Aman itself.' Now this passage is virtually identical to the conclusion of the present text, the last page of which begins at precisely the same point.