souls (for lack of a better word)
Technically, they are
fëar, but since talking about "fear" gets confusing, souls works just as well. "Spirit" would be an alternative translation.
*is a huge fan of the Lay*
The last few lines:
- The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn -
And Finrod fell before the throne.
...have been tweaked. In the original, Tolkien maintains the rhyming couplets (which is how the rest of the Lay is written):
- The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn,
a vast smoke gushes out, a roar -
and Felagund swoons upon the floor.
(In the Lay, Sauron is called Thû, while Finrod is called Felagund [Finrod is still the name of his father, Finarfin.])
And yes, I assume that
Voronwë already knew that, so I hope I'm not stepping on toes to point it out. I recently read it in one of
Wilko's old threads on TORc.
Anyway......
This scene is preceded, in the Lay, with the Interrogation. "Where have ye been? What have ye seen?"
Still in disguise, Finrod answers as an orc:
"In Elfinesse; and tears and distress,
the fire blowing, the blood flowing,
these have we seen, there have we been.
Thirty we slew and their bodies threw
in a dark pit. The ravens sit
and the owl cries where our swath lies."
When asked their names, they give Dungalef and Nereb
During the course of the brief interview, Sauron discovers that they know more about the kingdoms of the elves than the movements of the orcs, so he asks them to repeat their vows:
- 'Whom do ye serve, Light or Mirk?
Who is the maker of mightiest work?
Who is the king of earthly kings,
the greatest giver of gold and rings?
Who is the master of the wide earth?
Who despoiled them of their mirth
the greedy Gods? Repeat your vows,
Orcs of Bauglir! Do not bend your brows!
Death to light, to law, to love!
Cursed be moon and stars above!
May darkness everlasting old
that waits outside in surges cold
drown Manwë, Varda and the sun!
May all in hatred be begun,
and all in evil ended be,
in the moaning of the endless Sea!'
But no true Man or Elf yet free
would ever speak that blasphemy.
Beren asks to be allowed to get on with their errand, and Sauron replies:
- 'Patience! Not very long
shall ye abide. But first a song
I will sing to you, to ears intent.'
Then his flaming eyes he on him bent,
and darkness black fell round them all.
Only they saw as through a pall
of eddying smoke those eyes profound
in which their senses choked and drowned.
It continues with the portion quoted in the published Silmarillion. I think it was a brilliant suggestion to portray the song using the Lay
. But anyway, hopefully that will help to put it into context. The Lay does make many references to past history throughout - we hear how Thingol met Melian, for instance, and we got the Oath and Kinslaying earlier to understand why Celegorm and Curufin are so opposed to the idea.
As I see it, the contest with Sauron progresses from simple to profound. At first, they are just giving riddling double-speak answers, then they must give names in disguise, and then he traps them because they do not really know what the Orcs were up to. But that is just "interrogation."
It moves on to the gauntlet of the blasphemous oaths - now, rather than being asked if they
know what orcs know, they are being asked if they believe what orcs believe - are they orcs 'in truth.' And of course, they are not, so they cannot. In the build-up of Thû, JRRT established that he was a wizard and necromancer - now, he uses that power on them, to strip them of their disguises and reveal who they
really are.
Finrod tries to match his powers against that, so this is an active duel, not just a 'recalling' of past events. They are not reliving history, but Finrod is calling it up to his defense (so history is not a passive witness, either). The chink in his armor is the Kinslaying, and so Sauron is able to use that to overthrow him, in the end. The way he does this is by 'taking over' the things that Finrod recalls. The Kinslaying is a work fit for Morgoth, not the elves, and so....
But the reason I quoted so extensively, was so everyone could see the language used in the Lay for comparison. "the fire blowing, the blood flowing," might be poetic, but it is also concrete - it is meant to refer to actual fire and actual blood.
