Characters paying attention

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

I'm pretty sure Gandalf never went anywhere near Erebor when Smaug was alive, and I'm positive he didn't go through the Back Door before it got destroyed. So was Frodo not paying attention to Uncle Bilbo when he rambled on about his adventures?

I actually always read this as two separate pieces of information: through Dragon-lair (he was at least around) and then some other, completely unrelated hidden door, which, since it was mentioned alongside the dragon lair, ergo perhaps around the same time, I thought it might refer to Gandalf's infiltration of Dol Guldur. (Which would on the contrary prove that Frodo was perhaps paying too much attention.)

Anyway, if the hidden door is separate from the dragon lair, then it could of course refer to anything, the thing Frodo might have freshly in his mind being of course the famous "Mellon door", the Eregion gate to Moria.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I actually always read this as two separate pieces of information: through Dragon-lair (he was at least around) and then some other, completely unrelated hidden door, which, since it was mentioned alongside the dragon lair, ergo perhaps around the same time, I thought it might refer to Gandalf's infiltration of Dol Guldur. (Which would on the contrary prove that Frodo was perhaps paying too much attention.)

Anyway, if the hidden door is separate from the dragon lair, then it could of course refer to anything, the thing Frodo might have freshly in his mind being of course the famous "Mellon door", the Eregion gate to Moria.

It's certainly possible; but the lack of commas in "through dragon-lair and hidden door /
and darkling woods" suggests that they may well be a single list. 'Dragon-lair' has to be Erebor, and 'darkling woods' sounds like Mirkwood - which would fit very firmly with a Hobbit-theme, and not work at all for LotR (Gandalf wasn't with Frodo for any forests!).

Good point about the Moria-gate, though; given that we're told this is only scraps of the original dream-song, that's probably a good interpretation.

hS

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

It's certainly possible; but the lack of commas in "through dragon-lair and hidden door /
and darkling woods" suggests that they may well be a single list. 'Dragon-lair' has to be Erebor, and 'darkling woods' sounds like Mirkwood - which would fit very firmly with a Hobbit-theme, and not work at all for LotR (Gandalf wasn't with Frodo for any forests!).

Good point about the Moria-gate, though; given that we're told this is only scraps of the original dream-song, that's probably a good interpretation.

hS

Well, but if the dragon lair, hidden door and presumably Mirkwood are meant to be a part of the same journey, then actually it makes MORE sense to assume the hidden door refers to Dol Guldur, as the Moria door passage happened elsewhere and half a century later.

Sidenote: I am also very much suspicious about the "southern hill". If we disregard the easy and boring option that Frodo's grasp of southern geography is too weak and he just had to quickly think of something that rhymes, or the other undoubtedly funny option that he is hinting at Gandalf's unrecorded trips for inferior pipeweed to Southlinch (although that would not make sense time-wise; I doubt Frodo or indeed anyone knew or cared about Breeland pipeweed before the crisis caused by Sharkey); anyway, disregarding those, this seems like yet another bit of insight into the obscure "Incánus in the South" business!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"Southern hill" might refer to Amon Lanc, the hill in southern Mirkwood upon which Dol Guldur stood. Or just possibly the hill on which Edoras was built. If we need further south, the hill-like Minas Tirith, or even the headland of Dol Amroth.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

"Southern hill" might refer to Amon Lanc, the hill in southern Mirkwood upon which Dol Guldur stood.

WHY THANK YOU!!!

But now, this makes perfect sense! This only supports my theory that it is about Dol Guldur!

What we have here, in that case, is parallelism on two subsequent lines:

From Wilderland to Western shore,
from northern waste to southern hill,
through dragon-lair and hidden door
and darkling woods he walked at will.

So we can divide this part of the song among two themes: one related to the Dragons (one of the "big baddies" Frodo knew that Gandalf had a hand in getting rid of; the chief villain of Bilbo's story) and the second related to Sauron, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (the other "big baddie" Frodo knew that Gandalf opposed; the villain of Frodo's own story).

Thus, the Dragon-related part is the "northern waste" (cf. the map in the Hobbit, "far to the North, the Withered Heath whence came the Great Worms"), pertaining to the place where dragons are known to come from. And "dragon-lair" being obviously associated with the Dragons and Smaug (he originally too came to Dale from the North where the rest of his kind live).

And secondarily, if we take William's (not mine, see! Therefore trustworthy, independent source!) postulate that "southern hill" is Amon Lanc/Dol Guldur, the hill in the south of Mirkwood (where Gandalf went secretly to ascertain Sauron's presence), then we have "southern hill" as well as "hidden door", which also points to the fact that Gandalf entered Dol Guldur secretly. Both relate to the other big feat of Gandalf's, his scouting of Dol Guldur.

***

Sidenote: Actually, if you want to divide this whole strophe without leaving anything unassigned, you could also assign the first line ("Wilderland") to the Dragon and the last one ("darkling woods") to Sauron. It would work as well, the poetic language is not that precise in terms of geography. (In reality, "the darkling woods" are a part of "Wilderland"; but as words, the term "Wilderland" may evoke Dragons, whereas "darkling woods", as a periphrasis to Mirkwood, may point more specifically to the Necromancer. Especially with the use of the word whose root is "dark-", further evocative of the themes of darkness, the Dark Lord and so on.)

Or option B, you can just say that line 1 and 4 simply frame the whole verse, being parallel or synonymous to each other (delineating the space in which Gandalf moved: the first line externally by describing the border - the utmost limits from-to; the fourth line internally, describing it based on what lies inside the border: majority of the space delineated in verse 1 is filled by "darkling woods").

Ta-dum!