From the Legends of the Drûg

by Parma Quentar Pheriannath

Where did that strange little people called the Drûg or Druedain come from, why did the Orcs call them OghorHaï: rebels, and how did they get to Beleriand with the Haladin.

Parma Quentar Pheriannath.

Introduction:

About 30 years ago, when I first read LotR I started wondering about the origin of the Hobbits. This wonder were strengthened when I read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales a few years later: Here were the origins of Elves and Men, Orcs, Dwarfs and Ents, and half a dozen of the other races of Middle Earth, but still no origin of Hobbits.

For a few years I played with the idea of writing a short story myself, introducing a handful of characters with legends and essays about their races. I wrote three pages and put them away for more than 10 years, then one day one of my colleagues, a semi-illiterate Heavy Metal fan I used to translate English texts for, asked me what 'Burzum' meant. When I answered, that is was Black Speech and meant 'darkness' and told him about LotR, and that I once had started to write a story in Tolkiens world, he asked me: "Why don't you finish it?"

Well, I started writing again, and now my 'short story' is about 400 pages, and I have almost a dozen introductory legends and essays. A few of which I've begun to translate into (awkward) English. The following is the first, I wrote, and the only one I finished translating yet.

Comments are welcome by mail or via reviews.

From the legends of the Drûg-folk.

Tall and proud we were – the first and greatest of the nine peoples that awoke between the first arising of the moon and the sun.

Wondering we saw the Silver Eye shine over the forests, when we sat by the shores of the eastern sea.

Without speech – for we had no language – we looked at each other in joy. Men and women we were, and we laughed and loved while the first nightingales sang.

Seven times the Silver Sheen traversed the sky while the leaves on the trees unfolded. Every time a new people woke, each with its own characteristics, and we wandered away from the shore, for they filled the land between the sea and the forests.

After eight months the gold-rayed sun arose in the west, and while the ninth – the golden-haired people awoke, our first children were born. Flowers blossomed on the ground, in the trees and in the sea, and birds flew singing, filling the air around us.

When the Silver Sheen saw the rising sun, he turned his face toward her, and when she again set in the west, he followed her – and we him: The entire people arose and followed the Moon – and the Sun, when she the next day rose from the sea! So, first of all peoples, ours began the journey westwards.

For many months we wandered through the forests, where the tree trunks leaked honey and the earth was covered with berries and mushrooms. Deer and rabbits sprang between the trees, and mice and coloured vermin were abundant in the grass. When we hungered we reached for fruits and herbs and tasted them, eggs we took from birds nests, and the sweet meat of small animals filled our stomachs – thus we learned knowledge of the forest.

Death and sickness we never knew, for we were young, and though we wrestled with wolves and bears and the great cats of the forest, our wounds healed in a single night. Our firstborn followed squirrels in the treetops, caught birds in flight and played with the cubs of wolves.

For a time we followed a roaring river that run westward in a deep bed, until one evening the forest thinned, and we saw a new sea stretching before us to the west and north. And here we met the fair people. Dressed in green and grey and armed with bow and spear they came to us singing in the starlight. Though we did not understand their words, it was as if the song became dream-images in our minds, and we sensed, that they were questioning us. With signs we tried to explain wherefrom we came and of the eight peoples, we left at the seashores to the east.

Fast runners the elves sent east and northwards, and they told us, that they wanted us to follow them to their homes north by the sea. Again we rose, and by hidden paths in the wild wood between the sea and the Red Mountains they led us to Cuivie-nenï: the cove where the rush of the sea, the murmur of waterfalls and the singing of the elves gathered to a music, that filled us with happiness, so that the entire people broke into joyous laughter. In the days, which followed, the Elves started teaching us their customs and their language.

One moonless night the Terrible People attacked: Hardly half our size they were but clad in helms and hauberks. With fire and with swords and javelins of iron they came rushing down the mountains killing as they ran. The Elves shot their arrows and fled, for they were only few against the hordes of Gorgûn-folk. Now a great wrath took us, and we tore apart many Gorgûn with our hands. But still lots of them came from the mountains, and while the forest burned and the bay was filled with red and black blood, the most of our people died.

Before dawn the Gorgûn-folk disappeared dragging many of our dead and wounded with them. While we cried over our lost ones, we heard gorgûnlaughter and the cries of our kin from the forest. The bravest of us gathered fallen swords and spears and went to free the prisoners, but none of those did we ever see again. When day came, the Elves returned and led us in flight by their secret paths to the south. We reached the forest river again, and they led us over high bridges of rope, some of us were ferried over in rafts and small boats. But before all the people had passed the river, the rear ones again was attacked by Gorgûn-warriors. Many of our strongest men were now armed with gorgûnweapons or clubs of wood and long stood their ground. Before they were vanquished, the rest of the people were safe beyond the river. The Elves broke the bridges and sailed away in the boats, and while the Gorgûn shot their arrows and cursed us, we escaped towards the west.

For years we wandered westwards in the forests. Though Gorgûn ever pursued us, it only was small bands, and only rarely it came to open fights. On our way we came upon several Elf-dwellings, but they avoided us, as if they knew we were pursued. We also met the Wood-giants, but no concourse we had with them, for we were too dissimilar. At last we reached the Western Mountains, and then the attacks from Gorgûn had stopped. In the bountiful land between the mountains and the Great River we lived in two score years. A new generation grew up and raised children themselves, so that we again became a mighty people.

But alas – here also the peace were broken. Another dark night the Gorgûn attacked. Bravely we defended ourselves and almost we had them vanquished, when their rearguard of Torgûn arrived: Misshapen trolls with hide like stone they were, with hammers and clubs of iron they killed us, against them the strength of our hands were not enough. Under their cover the Gorgûn still attacked, and in spite of our resistance we soon were bound in long lines with ropes and chains around our necks, and carrying our dead and wounded we were with whip cracks driven through the forests. Many nights we were driven – away from the path of the sun while our wounded died and our dead were eaten. Every day our keepers hid in shelters for the Golden Eye, and when they again went forward, the gnawed remains of our relatives shone red and white under heaps of stone and fallen logs. Though some of us tried to escape, most were quickly caught again – and killed.

Over the Great River by way of an high-shored island we were herded, and when we reached the Black Mountains the last remains of our once great people were ushered into the terrible tunnels leading to the cities of the Gorgûn-folk: Roughly hewed corridors and caves filled with filch and vermin. Here we were imprisoned, and to our great horror our children were taken from us. Now, we thought, the end had come and we all would be eaten, but yet our trials were not over: the children were given back to us, but with broken limbs, cuts and burns, and they died in our hands. The few that survived were taken again, as soon as their wounds were healed, again they were returned to us cruelly maltreated until they all died.

Now for long we suffered in our dungeons. Once in a while the Gorgûn fed us with bad meat and half-rotten herbs; we ate the pale mushrooms that grew in the dung piles, and we drank the water seeping down the prison-walls; but the small and sickly children, that were born to us in those times, we were allowed to keep. In time the Gorgun-folk fetched the strongest of us to do slave labour. Chained to the rock walls we were forced to hew stone, shovel garbage and carry firewood and iron to their forges. Before our children born in prison were grown up, we all were at work, and the food we got became a bit better and more abundant. We learned the crude crafts and rude language of the Gorgûn (even if we tried to remember the few words we were taught by the Elves, before we were caught). We learned, that the Gorgûns' word for us: 'Dûrghu' meant 'the Defeated'; but with time it were distorted to 'Drûghu', and this we even called ourselves. Their cruel customs we noticed and imitated, but never did we stop hating them.

Then our young ones were taken out from the caves to hunt. The incompetent hunters of the Gorgûn taught them under the threat that their parents, siblings, mates and children would be tormented to death and eaten, to hunt with poisoned arrows and spears, and in the course of a few years they knew the woodlands on both sides of the Black Mountains – where the animals went, and where the edible (and the poisonous) plants grew. While the Gorgûn-hunters wouldn't walk under the Golden Eye, the men could hunt unwatched at day and observe what happened in the lands around, as long as they brought home plentyful bounty.

It happened in the years, when our third generation were grown up – they were small, the largest of them reached only to the chests of their grandparents – that one of the young men who chopped firewood to the forges, in an idle hour, where there was no more wood to chop, cut a figure out of a log: A full-size life-like shape of a squatting Drûg. When the Gorgûn-guard saw, what the young man had wrought, it killed him and rapported this to its superiors. The very next day the Ghan of the Gorgûns came and painfully interrogated us: Had any other of us ever cut pictures, the question was. When we denied, it put us to the test, and when we fearfully hesitating tried, it appeared that almost all of us had the skill. The Ghan left us, and we continued our drudgery, but a few months later we had another visit: A stranger, very like our eldest, and even a head taller than they, scared away a gang of Gorgûn-guards and friendly asked us about our origin, our numbers and skills. Then he bid us gather our hunting-weapons and our tools and follow him. For several days he led us through the tunnels, until we reached another gorgûn-dwelling, where we were allotted a space by a quarry, where giant blocks of stone stood hewn in grotesque gorgûnlike shapes. Hammers and chisels of iron were given us, and we were ordered to copy the forms of some of the finished figures. When we succeded rather well, the stranger left us after having ordered the Gorgûns to guard and treat us well.

For some years we worked in the quarry before we discovered the reason for the work we did. A few times we had seen Torgûn like those, that once were the main force in our captivity, walk through the gorgûn-city. The finished figures were loaded on great carts and taken away through tunnels going north, and months later we recognized them in the Trolls walking back by the same tunnels led by Gorgûn-guards. Somehow the figures we made, were bestowed with life or an imitation thereof.

Because our work was important for the masters of the Gorgûn (of which we had seen none exept the stranger, who led us to the quarry) we had obtained a certain freedom of movement between the gorgûn-settlements. Thus we had formed a web of spies among our people, and our Ghân chosen by our elders, had formed a council to secretly plan our escape and revenge on the Gorgûn. These spies rapported, that the big stone-figures were carted out of the caves to a northern wood, whereto also captured forest-giants had been sent. The life-force of these were then by sorcery transferred to the figures, and that was how the Trolls were made.

Now the council came up with a plan: We began to put little flaws into our rock-hewn figures. Invisible fault-lines were laid in their necks and ancles, cavities in the stone were filled with sand and ashes, porous rock were polished, so that it looked like granite and wedges of weak stone were driven and glued firmly into knees and other joints. At the same time we worked more than willingly in all fields and were rewarded with more plentyful food and more freedom. The hunters were out alone both night and day, and the spies among them uncovered the secret sorcery, which gave the figures life. We now tested the sorcery on ourselves, and it appeared that we could transfer our own life-force to figures of wood or stone, that we called 'hoker-men'.

Now we felt ready to take a chance of escape and revenge as soon as an opportunity would show up – when we were struck by diseases: Our elders, and soon also our first-born and the next generation began to lose hair and teeth, the strength of their limbs waned and in a few years they died, weakened by all kinds of ilnesses, so that at last hardly any of us left were older than two score years. Those left of us were small, now even smaller than Gorgûn-folk, but hardened and strong from years of work in the quarries, trained in hunting and woodcraft and familiar with the country all around the Black Mountains. After this we lived in the caves for four scores of years while our numbers slowly grew again. Still we got more freedom and obtained more skill.

Then rumours began spreading amongst our hunters and the Gorgûn-folk of other human tribes wandering westwards, and one day the first of these was led into the caves – but not as prisoners: They were lured with promises of power and riches, and with weapons and tools of iron and the intoxicating beverages, the Gorgûn made from fermented fruit, grain, flowers and mushrooms.

But there were other peoples of men. It happened that tidings came to the Gorgûn: Three great tribes, which they had not been able to subdue or entice, because they were in collusion with Elves, were on their way to the west. The first of them had passed the Great River and with great losses had beaten the Gorgûn-tribes of the Misty Mountains. All Gorgûn-warriors and their allies from the Misty Mountains, the Black Mountains and even from the Iron Mountains far to the north were summoned to stop the second people by the Great River. The Ghân of the Gorgûn-folk then promised us, that if we fought on their side, we would be freed from bondage, when the battle was won. By all possible speed our hunters were summoned to three mustering-sites: By the southern peaks of the Misty Mountains and on both sides of the Great River north of the Broken Hills; but not faster than we could put our plan into action.

Now all the people exept toddlers and their mothers and feeble elders set out from the caves to the mustering-sites, where they were armed. The Gorgûn-chieftains marvelled at our great numbers, but our Ghâns each place made light of it and told them, that fewer of us had come to the other sites. Then we started the long march northwards. When we rested after the first day, our thoughts were sent back to the hoker-men, we had left behind in our quarters. These rock- or wood-hewn figures were by the sorcery of imitation made alive and sent ravaging to the gorgûn-cities, where they killed the guards, that were left behind, and all Gorgûn spawn and females. Then we sent them north in our own tracks, marching when we were resting.

After more than a score of days' marches we arrived at the battlefield,where the fight already had started. On a longish isle in the river the most part of the enemy were standing, while a vanguard entrenched between trees and rocks on the west-bank were under attack by Gorgûn-warriors. They almost had been defeated, when we came along and were ordered into the river with a vanguard of Trolls. When these arrived on the isle and were hopelessly attacked by the enemy, we started the next part of our plan: All the people laughingly attacked the Trolls from behind – and we knew all of their weak points, so even if we had sore losses, we vanquished them utterly, and then we collapsed in the low water, evidently overwhelmed by our wounds and exhaustion. While the amazed enemy withdrew, the Gorgûn-warriors were enraged and threw themselves into the river to attack us, crying: "Oghor, oghor!" meaning 'rebels', to us. In the same moment our Hoker-men arrived and attacked the Gorgûn from the rear, and the enemy, who now were satisfied, that we were on their side, attacked from the isle.

The Gorgûn-warriors who now were caught in a double pincer-movement fought obsessed by fear and rage, and because of their overwhelming numbers they drew the enemy back to the isle. Soon the Hoker-men were chopped to pieces and lay as twisted lumps of wood and stone; but not before they had thinned the ranks of Gorgûn. While we felt the pain from the Hoker-mens ruin, their life-force returned to us, and we rose from the brink and low water. Covered in mud we sneaked between the fighting Gorgûn cutting throats and tendons with our knives.

When dawn broke, the riverbanks lay covered in bodies, while the blood slowly were washed away by the lazy river. On the isle a large part of the Gorgûn-folks enemies still were standing. A few surviving Gorgûn were hiding in the reeds; those who could had long since fled to the forest in the east or the mountains in the west. The Trolls lying head- and limbless in the water had been retransformed into the rocks from which they were made; while the last remains of our people lay exhausted, most of them wounded amongst bodies of enemy and friends alike.

The Haladin, as we later would call the enemies of the Gorgûn, came closer, and we percieved, that there were strife among them. One part of them disavowed us and thought, when they saw our shapes, which in their eyes were ugly, that we were some kind of Gorgûn; while others could see that we were human like themselves, only smaller and strange, and they pointed out, that we had saved them from ruin. And they carried us to the riverbank, where they nursed our wounds, fed us and gave us to drink, and they fetched skins so we could rest. Our dead they buried, after making sure that we felt it right, beside their own casualties under the trees of the isle. Some of the least harmed Hoker-men were sat as watch-stones around the isle, that no Gorgûn would ever dare return to the battlefield and desecrate the graves. The Haladin then named the island in their own language: Tol Gortheb: The isle of idols.

In the fair woods off the western banks we rested until the day all our wounds were healed. It happened so, that a part of the people would go with the Haladin on their westward trek; but the most part, who had left their women and children in the caves of the Black Mountains, now laughingly returned south after having sworn, that they would keep Gorgûn away from the mountains for ever. In the forests beside the mountains they would dwell, and the mountains should be scoured of all Gorgun-kind, so that they never would be called the 'Black' Mountains again.

But the rest of us yourneyed with the Haladin over the Misty Mountains. After years of travelling, where even the Haladin split, when a part of their people went south to dwell in the great forests between the mountains and the sea, we at last traversed the Blue Mountains to the Land of the Mighty, where our travels came to an end in the Forests of Brethil by the great river Sirion.