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Footnote to the Aragorn quiz
Jul. 2nd, 2009 08:15 pmOne of the things Estelcontar and I ended up discussing as a result of this quiz was the question of whether or not Aragorn [or the Dunedain in general] could understand the speech of the beasts and the birds.
We decided that the only refernce to this that we knew of was this one from chapter 9 'At the sign of the Prancing Pony':
They were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of beasts and birds.
We decided that was not the same as saying they COULD understand the languages of the beasts. Then Estelcontar sent me this passage from Return of the Shadow:
...As the evening deepened Trotter began to tell them tales to keep their minds from fear. He knew much lore concerning wild animals, and claimed to speak some of their languages; and he had strange stories to tell of their lives and little known adventures....
So from Trotter's own mouth we find he claimed to have this ability. I wonder what strange tales he had to tell and wouldn't it have been wonderful if we had got to hear them!
We decided that the only refernce to this that we knew of was this one from chapter 9 'At the sign of the Prancing Pony':
They were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of beasts and birds.
We decided that was not the same as saying they COULD understand the languages of the beasts. Then Estelcontar sent me this passage from Return of the Shadow:
...As the evening deepened Trotter began to tell them tales to keep their minds from fear. He knew much lore concerning wild animals, and claimed to speak some of their languages; and he had strange stories to tell of their lives and little known adventures....
So from Trotter's own mouth we find he claimed to have this ability. I wonder what strange tales he had to tell and wouldn't it have been wonderful if we had got to hear them!