Tar-Elenion: Thank you for the elucidation.
ShagratU:
In the letter to his son
Tolkien was writing in the real world. In the real world 'folk' means humans. Tolkien is saying that there are no people (humans, folk, human beings, what have you) made bad with the intention of their creator, by which Tolkien meant
God I'm sure. But you've already agreed with me that at this point Tolkien only meant for '
uruks' and '
uruk-hai' to apply to
Saruman's
Orcs.
When I said that 'Tolkien originally intended for Uruk-hai to be a plural term' the natural conclusion was that
Uruk was the singular, so I hope you don't think you're arguing with me.
As for
goblin and
orc being not quite equivalents, that is not my idea, that is CT's. HoME VI, p.437, note 35:
This is not the first use of the word
Orcs in the LR papers:
Gandalf refers to 'orcs and
goblins' among the servants of the
Dark Lord, pp.211, 364; cf. also pp. 187, 320. But the rarity of the usage at this stage is remarkable. The word
Orc goes back to the
Lost Tales, and had been pervasive in all my father's subsequent writings. In the
Lost Tales the two terms were used as equivalents, though some times apparently distinquished (see II.364, entry
Goblins). A clue may be found in a passage that occurs in both the earlier and the later
Quenta (IV .82, V.233): 'Goblins they may be called,
but in ancient days they were strong and fell.' At this stage it seems that 'Orcs' are to be regarded as a more formidable kind of 'Goblin'; so in the preliminary sketch for 'The Mines of
Moria' (p. 443) Gandalf says 'there are goblins - of very
evil kind, larger than usual,
real orcs.'- It is Incidentally notable that in the first edition of
The Hobbit the word
Orcs is used only once (at the end of Chapter VII 'Queer Lodgings'), while in the published LR
goblins is hardly ever used.
My point from the revised Hobbit was that Tolkien was writing differently then in the original version- he specifically changed the wording from goblins to orcs to describe 'the big ones'. Please see
http://www.ringgame.net/riddles.html#93 for a side by side comparison of the two versions.
As I have continuously tried to point out, the letter from 1944 does not use the word
uruks in the same sense as how it is used in the narrative. Between the letter writing in 1944 and the UT passage in the late 1960's, there was a change in connotation. This has been the point of this whole thread, I believe. We never see the term uruks applied to
Ugluk and co. or the
Helm's Deep crew at any point during the writing of the LotR. This only happens in UT, which means it was (intentionally or no) a break from the use of this term in LotR proper.
We do agree that Saruman's Orcs were on average larger than any other breed (I am counting my blessings). I think that it is revealing that Tolkien associates this increase in size with the ability to use larger (
mannish)
weapons, specifically the
bows. If Tolkien had simply said that the slain Orcs at
Amon Hen had 'large' equipment that would be one thing. But he specifically states 'their gear is not all of goblin-make' in the first draft, and 'they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of
Men' later. This to me is associating the Uruk-hai early on (at their first description) with men.
I agree completely that Tolkien abandoned Ugluk's use of
Rohirric (Ugluk later calls them 'Whiteskins' and seems to generally despise them). My point is that from the beginning Tolkien wrote the Isengarders with mannish elements- their language and their gear. This association of the Isengarders with something mannish had not changed with the writings in
Morgoth's Ring. From the inception of the term, 'Uruk-hai' has referred to something fundamentally different than the troops of
Sauron, which were called first Orcs and then Uruks.
As for the external origin of the Isengarders, you were on the right track a couple of days ago. From HoME VII, p.347 note 18 (this is in the chapter 'The Story Forseen from
Lorien'):
Black orcs of
Misty Mountains capture
Merry and
Pippin, bear them to
Isengard.
This is Tolkien's first conception of Merry and Pippin's capture at the Orc raid (he had earlier just had Merry and Pippin wander off from Amon-hen, eventually bumping in to
Treebeard). We see that the large Orc-chieftain in Moria was originally akin to Ugluk and co (perhaps a putative
Lurtz?). This is echoed in the later narrative by your passage from Appendix A, the House of
Eorl, where it is great uruks of the Misty Mountains which Saruman eventually uses to create his hybrids.
As for Tolkien gifting a stronger breed to Sauron, in order to keep him competitive (but still clearly inferior) to Saruman in Orc-breeding: Tolkien had always given Sauron tougher troops than the run of the mill guys. This concept ran back before the concept of Saruman's Uruk-hai (see extended quote from HoME VI, above). The point is, they used to be called Orcs, then later they were called Uruks. They were not called Uruks to equate them to Saruman's (IMO), they were called Uruks because they could no longer be called 'veritable Orcs' after Tolkien dropped frequent use of the term goblins.
I think that there was evidence that the equivalence between uruks and Uruk-hai disappeared in the 1950's- there is the Index to LotR, at least.
Hobbits,
Halflings, Holbytlan, and Perrianath are all equated in the Index.
Black Captain,
Black Riders, Morgul-King, Morgul-Lord,
Nazgul,
the Nine,
Ringwraiths, Winged Messenger, Witch Lord of
Angmar, and Wraiths are all equated in the index. Even
gorgun and Orcs are equated, after only one usage of
gorgun in the text. There are three references for Uruks, and three for Uruk-hai in the index. This is a total of 6 references, none of which correspond to a group in both categories. Furthermore, the index does not cross-reference the two terms. Given there proximity, it is hard to imagine that Tolkien would forget to do this if he intended for the terms to be equivalent. Incidentally, this also implies to me that CT did
not get his UT index entry from his father's original rough draft for the index of LotR.
As for mistake vs. shorthand, I prefer to say shorthand, as this gets away from the unsavory notion that our Good Professor was slowly beginning to muddle his terms, an occurence which surely did not spring up of a sudden in 1972. The shorthand theory is at least supported by the fact that Tolkien often used initials in manuscripts for names which he would later fill in. If he did this for notes he was handwriting, then he might have done it as well while typing (remember he only used two fingers). We do not know which names were given in full in the actual manuscript- CT says
and except in minor details such as shifts in nomenclature (where retention of the manuscript form would lead to disproportionate confusion or disproportionate space in elucidation) I have made no alterations for the sake of consistency with published works;
This certainly leaves the door open that CT might have replaced initials with words. Since CT is not JRRT there is the possibility that the former filled in a different name than the latter would have, had he ever revised the UT text or published it himself.
CT
was startled that the first use of uruks appeared so late in the narrative, if I can read anything in his published words. HoME IX, p. 34, note 4:
A few such details from the earliest form of the conclusion of the chapter may be mentioned. The orc 'slave-drivers' are called 'two of the large fierce uruks, the fighting-orcs (I told you fighting was synonymous with both Uruks and Uruk-hai -aragil)', and this seems to be the first time that the word was used (though the name Uruk-hai had appeared long since, VII.409, VIII.22 see also p. 436);
It seems to me that CT thinks it odd that uruks is used so long after the term Uruk-hai has popped up, which is of course understandable since we know he equates the two terms in his mind. It is largely in consideration of this passage that I have been looking at earlier uses of 'veritable orcs', etc lately.
Finally, regarding Uruk-hai and it's application to men-orcs and orc-men. Doubtless you smell the resurgence of my 'hai' as men theory, which has been shelved for the past few days. Well, do we know for certain that the orc-men weren't joining the men-orcs at Helm's Deep in a rousing chorus of 'We are the fighting Uruk-hai'? Having recently re-read Robert Foster's definition of Uruk-hai, I note that he speculates that the southerner of
Bree and the Chief's men of
the Shire might have been Uruk-hai. Clearly I think Foster's definition as a whole is in error, but I wonder if he might not be on to something there. Were
Orcish derivative
languages (BS if you like) really subtle enough to distinguish between orc-men and men-orcs? Could 'hai' mean 'people' in terms of a group with a common civilization and ancestry? Did Saruman truly intend to get two distinct types of hybrids, or did he (by accident or otherwise) produce a continuum from 99.9% Orc to 99.9% Human, a continuum which could have been collectively labeled Uruk-hai?
