Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Which draft, where?! Can I get a source?

Well that is curious.

I recall reading a reference to an Icelandic saga where a fellow was using a weapon (might have even been a seax, come to think of it) that he had taken from a mound. I'm curious now if that was the Professor's inspiration for the barrow blades, come to think of it.

.... I also tend to suspect that during his revision passes he changed his mind on the nature of the barrow blades at least once - to the extent he visualized them as physical objects at all, that is.

https://youtu.be/m0VsU2XYBmw?t=6537 Ere is a link to the Tolkien professor aka Corey Olsen talking about it, in his wonderful series on the history of the lord of the rings.

@greg

I came across an issue of a (seemingly quite well researched!) Middle-earth role-playing 'zine from about a decade ago that has an article about weapons and armor in Middle-earth, which includes a quote attributed to The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 8: The War of the Ring: Part Three: III, Minas Tirith Note 16 -

Denethor says of Pippin’s sword: ‘Surely it is a sax wrought by our own folk in the North in the deep past?’, where RotK has ‘blade’ and ‘kindred’. The word sax (Old English seax, dagger, short sword) was the final choice in the draft after rejection of ‘blade’, ‘knife’ and ‘dagger’.

So it appears that the Professor at least considered the word "sax" in an earlier draft, but given that he settled on describing the barrow blades as "a dagger, long, leaf-shaped, and keen" in the final manuscript, I don't know what that does for documenting the use of seax-type blades in Middle-earth. Certainly shouldn't stop anyone from using them, of course!