Are Simbelmynė purely a Tolkien invention, or are
there real flowers that grow mostly on gravesites? ? Would the climate of Rohan
really be warm enough for any flowers to bloom year-round? Does the fact that
the flowers bloom year round have symbolic significance?
A. I'm not much for botany. I'll leave this to others more informed and
inclined.
Five hundred years is really not a long time in
Middle-earth, considering that the Last Alliance took place over 3,000 years
before. The Rohirrim settled in Rohan, or Calenardhon, as it was known then, in
2510, well into the Third Age of Middle-earth, yet to the people of Rohan this
is "lost in the midst of time" Why? What does this say about the Rohirrim?
A. As others have pointed out, for mortals of normal life-span 500 years is
a very long time.
In Appendix A, II, The House of Eorl, Tolkien writes that
the Rohirrim were in origin close kin to the Beornings and the men of the
west-eaves of Mirkwood. Do the Rohirrim and the Beornings still recognize
that kinship at the time of the War of the Ring? Do any traditions or customs
remain that are common to both?
A. Possibly, but without more information about the Beornings and the men of
the West-Eaves one can't be
certain.
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"You can't even imagine a totally new morality...Try to imagine a society where honesty and justice and courage and self-control and faith and hope and charity are evil, and lying and cheating and stealing and cowardice and betrayal and addiction and despair and hate are all good. You just can't do it."
"Didn't Milton have a line for that? 'Evil be thou my good!'"
"Yes, that was Satan's line, in Paradise Lost. The society we're trying to imagine does exist after all--in hell."
