Originally posted by Snaga
Wrong. It never clearly refers to
Mordor orcs, except in your one confused example.
The example is not confused. The evidence from LotR has been directly quoted. To prove that the "rebel
Uruk-hai" does not refer to
Orc's in
Sauron's service you need to provide evidence that other
Orcs (Isengarders) were were involved in or belived to be involved in the
events at
Cirith Ungol.
Or should I thank you for admitting that the example I provided is
the one place it does clearly refer to Mordor Orcs?
At
Helms Deep we have
Gamling describing
Saruman's forces as 'half orcs and goblin-men'; and later both
Merry and
Aragorn attest to their presence. And yet the narrator only ever uses the term 'Orc' in the entire chapter. But these Orcs, who must therefore include men-orcs and orc-men, repeatedly call themselves the Uruk-Hai. It clearly refers to all of them.
Gamling describes some of Sauron's forces as half-orcs and goblin-men. Gamling does not directly refer to Saruman's Uruk-hai as half-orcs and goblin-men hence my statement was correct. Merry and Aragorn refer to the half-orcs and
goblin faced
men march seperately from and are distinguished from the Orcs.
"'Then all at once there was a tremendous stir. Trumpets blared and the
walls of
Isengard echoed. We thought that we had been discovered, and that battle was going to begin. But nothing of the sort. All Saruman's people were marching away. I don't know much about this war, or about the Horsemen of
Rohan, but Saruman seems to have meant to finish off the king and all his men with one final blow. He emptied Isengard. I saw the enemy go: endless lines of marching Orcs; and troops of them mounted on great
wolves. And there were battalions of Men, too. Many of them carried torches, and in the flare I could see their faces. Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed. Do you know, they reminded me at once of that Southerner at
Bree: only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were.'
'I thought of him too,' said Aragorn. 'We had many of these half-orcs to deal with at
Helm's Deep. It seems plain now that that Southerner was a spy of Saruman's; but whether he was working with
the Black Riders, or for Saruman alone, I do not know. It is difficult with these
evil folk to know when they are in league, and when they are cheating one another.'"
This is further made clear by the description in 'Fords of Isen'.
Wrong again. I do not have to prove any such thing. I have already said that the Orcs were referring to events at Cirith Ungol, but misidentifying their quarry, for whatever reason. I have presented numerous reasons how this might come about. In order for you to prove your presumption you would have to prove that (a) Shagrat correctly reported events at Cirith Ungol; and (b) he was correctly understood; and (c) that those that he reported to correctly passed on this information to the tracker and soldier orc; and (d) that these two both understood this information; and (e) that they were not being sarcastic in their conversation.
No, I am correct. I have provided direct quotes showing that the information that was known to Shagrat is entirely consistant with the information relayed in the conversation between the soldier and tracker.
No one has been able to provide evidence that Isengarders were present or believed to be present at Cirith Ungol and thus "rebel Uruk-hai" referred to Isengarders.
I did that already. The
Gandalf example, or the 'tarks' example.
'
Uruks' as used by Gandalf is 'anglicization'. 'Tark' is a debased form of the
Quenya 'tarkil'. 'Tarks' is an anglicization. If you can provide evidence that 's' is a plural marker in either of these speech forms I am sure the various
Tolkien linguistic experts, including those authorized by the Estate, would be delighted to know, would be delighted to know.
As for CT's index in UT, I will stick to the author's own words.
As CT said:
"In the event there was no index to
The Lord of the Rings until the second edition of 1966, but my father's original rough draft has been preserved. From it I derived the plan of my index to
The Silmarillion, with translation of names and brief explanatory statements, and also, both there and in the index to this book, some of the translations and the wording of some of the "
definitions"."
UT, Introduction, The
Istari
"The brief defining statements are not restricted to matters actually mentioned in the book; and occassionally I have added notes on the meaning of hitherto untranslated names."
Providing evidence that other Orcs (Isengarders) were believed to be involved in the events at Cirith Ungol is the only way to prove that "rebel Uruk-hai" does not refer to Sauron's Orcs.
What the soldier and tracker had to say is entirely consistant with what Shagrat knew (and what could be observed at Cirith Ungol).