Moving Sale: Magic Rings and Other Trinkets Half Off - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
Thousands of years later Gandalf told Frodo that "in Eregion long ago many Elven-rings were made, magic rings as you call them, and they were, of course, of various kinds: some more potent and some less. The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles -- yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals." That's a very ambiguous passage, and one which has inspired much discussion. Was Gandalf implying some of these Rings were still around, or simply stating that if any of them had survived he believed they would be dangerous artifacts for mortals to possess? He goes on to say, "But the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, they were perilous."
Perilous? Gandalf, there were a lot of these Great Rings. The Elves made sixteen of them before Celebrimbor went off on his own and made Three. Were the nineteen Great Rings a minority? What did the Elves do with the lesser Rings when Sauron put on the One Ring? The keepers of those "essays in the craft" must have taken off their rings, too, not just the Elves wearing the nineteen Great Rings. So by the time Sauron showed up at the border of Eregion (nearly 100 years later), where were all the lesser rings? No one would have been wearing them.
Perhaps these rings were rounded up and stored in the House of the Mirdain, which Celebrimbor defended until he was taken. And another treasury was looted. Sauron must have picked up quite a few potent items which would have been, in Gandalf's opinion, "dangerous for mortals". The Elves were interested in stopping the effects of time and preserving the beauty of their lands. They may have worked on other neat things and bestowed their virtues wherever possible. Every garden and orchard in Eregion must have been a magical place. Every tower must have held secrets of Elven sorcery. Every town and homestead must have literally gleamed with magic cutlery and pottery.
The Elves built entire civilizations and those civilizations included everything from hitching posts for their horses to crystal gems used for healing and controlling the forces of nature. They were so into doing what they would do that the very lands remembered them. Legolas said he could hear the stones of Eregion lamenting their former masters: "Deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us. But they are gone." Did the tumbled stones actually speak to Legolas or was he merely sensing a memory of the purpose to which the stones had been devoted? Was there a resonance of the sub-creational power, the will and the song, which must have gone into building up the stoneworks, and shaping the stones.
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