At the gates of Edoras:
There sat many men in bright mail, who sprang at once to their feet and
barred the way with spears. "Stay strangers here unknown!" they cried in the
tongue of the Riddermark, demanding the names and errands of the strangers.
Wonder was in their eyes but little friendliness; and they looked darkly upon
Gandalf.
"Well do I understand your speech," he answered in the same language; "yet few
strangers do so. Why then do you not speak in the Common Tongue, as is the
custom of the West, if you wish to be answered?"
"It is the will of Théoden King that none should enter his gates, save those
who know our tongue and are our friends," replied one of the guards. None are
welcome here in days of war but our own folk, and those that come from Mundberg
in the land of Gondor. Who are you that come heedless over the plain thus
strangely clad, riding horses that like to our own horses? Long have we kept
guard here, and we have watched you from afar. Never have we seen other riders
so strange, nor any horse more proud than is one of those that bear you. He is
one of the Mearas, unless our eyes are cheated by some spell.
"Say, are you not a wizard, some spy from Saruman, or phantoms of his craft?
Speak now and be swift!"
Is it usual to have this many guards at the gate or did the Rohirrim feel so
threatened by the approach of the strangers that they called for extra men?
Gandalf just finished telling the others to "speak no haughty word", yet he
immediately confronts the first person he meets. What's up with that?
Is the guard really as hostile as he sounds, or is he just doing his job?
I can understand him suspecting that the grey-cloaked strangers are spies, but
phantoms?
Are Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli really the strangest looking people the
gate guards have ever seen? After all, these men see dead
orcs.
*******************************************************
Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shpes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons--'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
We make still by the law in which we're made!
