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GreenHillFox
Nevrast
Apr 13, 6:18pm
Post #1 of 3
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Where was Durin’s Stone?
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East of Mirrormere, according to Barbara Strachey, who also traced the Fellowship’s travel east of the lake.
West of Mirrormere, according to KW Fonstad, who therewith suggested a possible passage at the western side (not entirely clear).
Thank you all for any further ideas/insights!
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Apr 13, 7:22pm
Post #2 of 3
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Good question. I hope someone will know. And I'd also wonder what made it special: carved in his likeness, or just a chunk of rock, or something else?
I wondered for many years about Tharbad, where Boromir crossed the river and lost his horse on his journey to Rivendell, and I was rewarded when I found one of a zillion notes somewhere (HoME? Unfinished Tales?) where Tolkien sketched out the city's history, its famous bridge, the dual ownership by Arnor and Gondor. There had to be a story/stories there, and there were!
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N.E. Brigand
Gondolin
Sun, 8:31pm
Post #3 of 3
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In Barbara Strachey's description for her map no. 19, "Moria East Gate and Mirrormere," she writes, "There is a picture of the path below the Gates. At some stage down the mountain side the path from the Gates must have joined Dimrill Stair winding down from the Redhorn Pass. The picture shows the path as it crosses the river Dimrill towards the east, and it must, therefore, presumably have run past Durin's Stone down the east side of Mirrormere."
I suspect the picture is Strachey is describing is the one used for September in The J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar 1973, published by Ballantine Books and consisting entirely of Tolkien's own artwork as previously published in The Hobbit along with some previously unpublished images for The Lord of the Rings. Allen & Unwin published further calendars using Tolkien's art for 1974 and 1976-1979, six in all. I do not own those calendars, but I had the good fortune as a child to be given Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien, published in 1979 by Allen & Unwin in the U.K. and by Houghton Mifflin in the U.S., which collects all the art from those calendars and add notes by Christoper Tolkien.
The September 1973 image, much wider than it is tall, is no. 24 in Pictures, where it is given the title, "Moria Gate (The Steps to the East Gate)." This is Christopher Tolkien's description: "Crayon drawing of the steps leading up to the Great Gates of Moria on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains; cf. The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 5, The Bridge of Khazad-dûm: 'Out of the Gates they ran and sprang down the huge and age-worn steps, the threshold of Moria.' This picture was published in The J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar 1973."
At the bottom of the steps on the left, the path crosses a rushing stream to the right, and a waterfall is visible along cliffs behind. The image itself includes a title at lower right reading "Moria Gate" (in all capitals).
Barbara Strachey's Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was published by Ballantine Books in 1981.
A revised edition of Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien was published in 1992, with one corrected image of Hobbiton and several revisions by Christopher Tolkien of his descriptions. This edition was republished in 2021 with "new digital scans" to show more "faithful reproductions of the original works" and dedicated to Christopher's memory. I have a 2024 printing thereof.
In this edition, the drawing in question is published as no. 23 with the title "Moria Gate (II)," and Christopher Tolkien begins his description by noting that his 1979 description "was entirely mistaken." Instead, as first suggested to him by a correspondent in 1984, the image is the cut-off bottom of the second of two images published in both the 1979 edition and 1992 edition as no. 22 with the title "Doors of Durin and Moria Gate" (in 1992 with "(I)" appended). That image shows the West-gate of Moria across a pool with some tendrils from the Watcher in the Water visible.
Between 1984 and 1992, Christopher found that his father wrote to Rayner Unwin about the 1973 calendar and said that the "picture for September seems to me rather poor: the bottom end of the following picture for October [no. 22 described above] which was cut-off and not meant to be used." Christopher Tolkien believes that his father cut off the bottom because it shows the Sirannon as a lively fall rather than the trickle it became as a result of the Watcher damming the pool. He suspects that the drawing was made before his father drafted the passage in which the Fellowship comes to the West-gate.
Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull show the two drawings above each other as nos. 148 and 149 in their chapter on The Lord of the Rings in J.R.R. Tolkien: Artists & Illustrator (1995) and as no. 39 in their chapter "Moria Gate" in The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (2015). In the former, the describe the drawing as being in pencil and colored pencil rather than in crayon.
The later Hammond and Scull book also includes three sketches of Dimrill Dale (one also appears in the earlier book), none of which appear to show the road the Fellowship followed, and while the roughest of the three sketches shows a dotted line marking their path, which is clearly west of the Silverlode, it is too large scale to make out details of their route in the immediate vicinity of the Mirrormere.
Glory to the heroes.
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