All the King's Horses and All the King's Men... - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
The connection appears to be the elusive Pengolodh, who appears here and there in The History of Middle-earth. Pengolodh was a Noldorin loremaster, one of the Lambengolmor (Loremasters of Tongues). He was one of Turgon's people in Gondolin, and had a mixed parentage, Noldor and Sindar. Pengolodh survived the fall of Gondolin and (presumably) wandered south with Tuor and Idril's band of exiles. He ended up in Eregion in the Second Age, and eventually fled Middle-earth after that realm was destroyed. Pengolodh was the last surviving member of the Lambengolmor when he sailed over Sea.
Osanwe-kenta opens with the following paragraph:
At the end of the Lammas Pengolodh discusses briefly direct thought-transmission (sanwe-latya "thought-opening"), making several assertions about it, which are evidently dependent upon theories and observations of the Eldar elsewhere treated at length by Elvish loremasters. They are concerned primarily with the Eldar and the Valar (including the lesser Maiar of the same order). Men are not specially considered, except in so far as they are in general statements about the Incarnates (Mirroanwi). Of them Pengolodh says only: "Men have the same faculty as the Quendi, but it is in itself weaker in operation owing to the strength of the hroa, over which most men have small control by the will."
"Osanwe-kenta" is thus presented as the work of an unnamed author -- probably Bilbo Baggins, although Carl Hostetter notes "it is ... tempting to identify this redactor, and that of Quendi and Eldar, as Aelfwine, the Anglo-Saxon mariner who was the translator / transmitter of and commentator upon other works of Pengolodh, such as the Quenta Silmarillion (LR: 201, 203-4, 275 fn) and, notably, Lhammas B (cf. LR:167)".
However, by 1959 Aelfwine had long since vanished from the mythology and all authoritative translations from the Elvish were attributed to Bilbo (the original author of The Red Book of Westmarch) and subsequent scholars, including Merry, possibly one or more Tooks, and at least one Gondorian scholar: Findegil, the King's Writer, who made a copy of the Thain's Book which Tolkien alleged was his source for The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien validates the Thain's Book as the ultimate authority on many things besides the stories of Bilbo and Frodo (in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings):
The Thain's book was thus the first copy made of the Red Book and contained much that was later omitted or lost. In Minas Tirith it received much annotation, and many corrections, especially of names, words, and quotations in the Elvish languages; and there was added to it an abbreviated version of those parts of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen which lie outside the account of the War. The full tale is stated to have been written by Barahir, grandson of the Steward Faramir, some time after the passing of the King. But the chief importance of Findegil's copy is that it alne contains the whole of Bilbo's 'Translations from the Elvish'. These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.
