The Lord of the Rings: The Uruk-Hai [Part One]

 

The Tale

Pippin lies in a dark dream: he is searching for Frodo, but a hundred hideous orc-faces are grinning at him from the shadows, and Merry is nowhere to be seen. He wakes up and finds himself on his back, lying in a cold wind with evening coming on. He is bound hand and foot. Next to him is Merry, pale, a dirty bandage wrapped around his brows.

Pippin begins to piece his memories together. They had gone running off calling and looking for Frodo, only to crash into the arms of a surprised group of Orcs. With a yell, dozens of the goblins had swarmed out of the trees. The hobbits drew their swords but the Orcs seemed more intent on capturing them than on fighting. Merry had cut off several of their arms and hands. ‘Good old Merry!’

Then Boromir had arrived. He slew many of the Orcs and the others ran. The three companions had only fled a little way when the Orcs returned, at least a hundred of them. They began to shoot arrows, only at Boromir. The man had blown his great horn; that cowed them for a moment, but when no help came, they attacked again. The last Pippin saw was Boromir leaning against a tree, plucking an arrow out. Then he must have been knocked on the head.

Pippin is full of questions. Is Merry much hurt, what happened to Boromir, why did the Orcs let them live, and where are they going? He has no answers. He feels cold and sick, and worst of all useless. He wishes Elrond had persuaded Gandalf to leave them behind. Pippin feels he’s been nothing but a nuisance on the journey, a piece of luggage carried and now stolen. He wishes Strider would come and reclaim him, but then what about Frodo? He struggles against his bonds a bit.

An Orc nearby growls at him to stay still. Another stoops over Pippin, his yellow fangs in his face, and threatens him with a long black knife. He’d like to teach the hobbits a lesson, but he has orders from the leader of the Isengard Orcs, Ugluk, whom he curses in his own tongue. Pippin finds to his surprise that he can understand much that the Orcs are saying. Apparently they are from several different tribes and can’t understand each other’s orc-speech, so are using Westron, the Common Speech, that they make ‘almost as hideous as [their] own language.’ There is a quarrel, and it’s getting hotter.

Bits and Bobs

I’m only doing a couple of pages today; I got up this morning already feeling tired, in some pain, and facing quite a bit of other work. But I decided I could advance, just a little bit.

This chapter is notable for containing one of the longest insights into the Orcish ‘culture’ and mindset. Not until Shagrat and Gorbag have their little discussion near Cirith Ungol do we learn so much. And we hear it in their own words, thanks to the communication problems between the Orcs of Moria, Ugluk and his Isengarders, and Grishnakh with his Mordor-folk. We get to hear the longest bit of ‘dialect’, ‘Ugluk a bagronkg Saruman-glob bubhosh skai’, which Tolkien Gateway records and analyzes:

“The phrase is not translated in the text, and in Appendix F it is only identified as "the more debased form [of Black Speech] used by the soldiers of the Dark Tower". However, there exist three different translations of this sentence.

First Translation:

This translation appeared in the draft of Appendix F, published in The Peoples of Middle-earth. Here, it is translated as "Uglúk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!"

Second Translation:

In a second translation, published in an article by Carl F. Hostetter in Vinyar Tengwar 26, the phrase reads "Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob – búb-hosh skai!", and the translation "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth - pig-guts, gah!". Hostetter identifies the speaker as Grishnákh.

Third Translation:

Yet another translation, published in Parma Eldalamberon 17, is from the late 1950s, and as far as is known, Tolkien's last word on the subject. Here, the sentence is divided into one long sentence and one shorter - only expressing more contempt.

"[Ugluk] u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob.
búbhosh - skai!"

Which is translated as:

"Uglúk to torture (chamber) with stinking Saruman-filth.
Dung-heap. Skai!".    – Tolkien Gateway.

 

It’s interesting to think that as this was Pippin’s first encounter with the language, he was paying particular desperate attention to it, might even have been traumatized by it, and so could remember enough of it to record.