Penned in the Library of Lore,
In the Realm of Dorwinion

Ioriston, I have learned this past fortnight, is a stern teacher. And though he is not wroth at my frequent abandonment of my Westron sarmë writing practice, he silently glowers at me in exasperation when I return hither to his Library from my rambles in the woods. However, he at least seems satisfied with my progress thus far in the speech of this tongue, for he has forbidden the Elves to talk with me in aught else; a task to which they have applied themselves with much merriment. (Though Ioriston himself still oftimes speaks Sindarin or Quenya to me, for he claims that Westron is neither sufficiently graceful nor eloquent enough for expressing his thought!)

   "Do you know," he asked me this afternoon (in Westron), "That you are so often to be found beneath the trees of the forest that the... Telelli... have given you the epessë, 'Aldaquen'?"
   "But that is Quenya," I laughed.
   "Indeed," he sighed, "It seems they delight in naming you in Quenya despite my behest."
I laughed again, "Or to spite it, perhaps?"
   "Perhaps."
He gave me a resigned look, and gestured to the parmar books I had been transcribing into Westron for practice.
   "I selected these specifically," he said. "Have you found anything of worth?"

I have indeed, for he has chosen wisely, and they are divers quentastar accounts of the history of Men in Endórë: from their awakening at Hildórien in the East at the beginning of the First Age, until the Last Alliance of Elves and Men at the end of the Second Age. They are fascinating reading, and I have been loath to spend time translating them into Westron; yet I deem Ioriston's saitalë teaching is working well, and I am grateful to him.

I am especially intrigued with the tale of the House of Haleth, the Haladin, for it is written:

The Men of the House of Bëor were dark or brown of hair, with grey eyes.... Like to them were the woodland folk of Haleth, but they were of lesser stature, and less eager for lore.¹

For despite the surmise of some that I am of Númenórean blood, this description suits me well (though not, perhaps, "less eager for lore"!); for I am varnë brown of hair (or was, ere the span of too many winters hoar-frosted it) and my eyes are grey, and I am surely "of lesser stature" for I stand nine inches short of two Rangar, which the Númenóreans considered "man-high". But of most interest to me is their description as "woodland folk", for this suggests to me that my love of the taurë forest may not only be in my heart, but perhaps in my very blood; it may also explain my particular reverence for the Aratar Arōmēz Oromë Aldaron and Yavanna Kementári, despite Ioriston's misgivings about the devotion of Men to the Valar.

But alas, I read here in the Narn i Chîn Húrin that the doom of Húrin son of Galdor came upon the House of Haleth at Ephel Brandir, their home in the Forest of Brethil, and that the line of Haldad ended then in the year 500 of the First Age. So too did Húrin's cursed onnar children, Túrin Turambar and Níniel Nienor, come among the Haladin aforetime and brought to them much anguish; indeed, Brethil was afterwards called Sarch nia Chîn Húrin and it was said that it would never be free of sorrow. It grieves me that this people, who may yet be my kin, suffered so greatly from the Curse of Morgoth as I myself bethought that I perhaps was likewise cursed by his once-minion Sauron.

Elsewhere it is written that the Gwathuirim are also descendants of the ancestors of the Haladin: the Enedwaith of old who dwelt in Ered Nimrais during the Second Age, and removed northward to the dales south of the Misty Mountains during the Dark Years, ere being driven eastwards to Hithaeglir by the advance of the Númenóreans, and they yet remain unfriendly to the Dúnedain to this day; but I surely cannot be of the coarse tribes of the Wild Men of Dunland!

However, the Men of Bree share this ancestry, for they are descended from those Enedwaith who in the Second Age removed northwards across Minhiriath into what is now the Bree-land, and were long afterwards absorbed into the Kingdom of Arnor; though the Númenóreans did not at first count these Haladin among the Men of Twilight, their own Edain ancestors who had kinship with the Houses of Bëor or Marach, for they spoke a lambë tongue strange to them (but as subjects of Arnor, the Men of Bree adopted Westron.)

Nevertheless, this is indeed heartening, and perhaps the answer to the mystery of whence I hail will come with the return of Lord Iavasdir's messenger to that distant land?

And yet my nightly olor dream of a fair white city persists, and when I awake my heart yearns for it exceedingly; I deem it is ainas a hallowed place, and in my very fëa I feel it is my home. But it surely cannot be the town of Bree; nor is it Fornost Erain, the capital of Arnor, for long ago that city fell to the forces of Angmar and its ruins have stood abandoned for nigh a thousand years.

1. Quenta Silmarillion, "Of the Coming of Men into the West"