Under-dogs of Middle-earth

Earlier, in 'The King of the Golden Hall' (Book Three, chapter VI) Aragorn, stirred by the site of the burial mounds of the Kings of the Mark, recites these lines of a long-dead bard of Rohan: 'Where now the horse and rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? Where is the spring and the harvest, and the tall corn growing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadows; The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?'

Though these lines were meant to recall Eorl the Young, the first king of Rohan, they might well be spoken for any of the Eorlingas, for it is not simply a paean for one man or his heroic deeds. It is a lament for all who have passed away; the horseman and the minstrel, the tiller of fields and the harvester of crops, the woodsman, the woodcutter and the tender of household fires and affairs. The stanza recited by Aragorn evokes vivid scenes of a vibrant society and though it is mournful in tone, it voices no regret. Its series of queries about the whereabouts of horse, rider, horn, helm, hauberk, etc are answered by allusions to the natural order of things - death being integral to that order.

The final question deviates from the preceding litany by asking for an identity. It is, pointedly left unanswered, however. As it regards the ceaseless flow of time and the unending cycles of the tides, a continuation of natural events is implied. And even though all these are rhetorical questions, they are nevertheless addressed to the characters listening in the story - Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli - as well as to the reader. One might assume that the answer to the last question, the one who is left unidentified in the verse, is the reader him/herself, the audience to these lines of collective memory. We, the under-dogs of Middle-earth, are the ones who will hold and treasure these memories, pass them along to our inheritors and behold the flowing of

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