Hmmm... okay, so is the answer Bilbo's farewell gifts?

Danceless and dishless, but never more dull, - silver spoons, given to Lobelia S.B.
Weapon fell in the hands of a crone, - umbrella, given to Adelard Took
Neither of Lorien, nor Dimrill Dale, - mirror (but not Of Galadriel or -mere), given to Angelica Baggins
In Mundburg or Imladris would be at home, - could be the bookcase, given to Hugo Bracegirdle; both those places are noted as stores of knowledge
Something to carry, to store, or to hold, - ????
A sword of speech, a well of words. - pen and inkwell, given to Milo Burrows

The ???? ought to be the wastepaper basket for Dora Baggins. It would fit "basket", but the specific type doesn't quite line up. The other option would be the One Ring, which was given to Frodo with an attached note (well, letter), and is at various times carried, stored, and held.

hS

That is correct, and perfectly explained! I was thiking the more general "basket" for the ???. I could not think of any basket references elsewhere in the text to use as the clue, hence more of a general description - can you think of any?

Now back over to Hui!

Do the mushrooms from Mrs. Maggot come in a basket? I feel like they do, but this worked well anyway! It was fun seeing bits and pieces come in, finding the link between seemingly disconnected parts, then verifying it by filling out the list. I think the mirror was my favourite part to solve.

I'll try and put something together; not sure what just yet, but I'll try!

hS

Okay, here we go:

Red for fire, burning fierce
From forge to raging final cost.
Black for kinship's oath renewed,
A crown unsought 'neath shadow lost.
Silver shining for the gold
That lingers when all hope is gone.
Thrice we chose - but at the last
What choice shared we, all three, ere dawn?

hS

Red for fire, burning fierce
From forge to raging final cost.

These sound like Feanor.

At least some of those lines refers to Feanor, but Feanor is not one of "we, all three".

hS

Red, black and silver...

The gold one initially reminded me of Aragorn - all that is gold does not glitter - and thus potentially Men of Dunharrow fulfilling their oath before the dawn from the Orodruin cloud, but can't really fit that to the rest of the lines.

Kinship's oath renewed sounds like Fingolfin's assurances that he will follow his elder brother, and his unexpected and unsought title of High King (but beneath shadow lost? No idea).

Yep. :) Though technically black is an assumption, and red could be more precisely described.

None of those, I'm afraid.

This, however, is exactly what "kinship's oath" and "crown unsought" refer to (and how did Fingolfin's reign end? "...shadow like a thundercloud / and o'er the the gleaming king it bowed...")

hS

If red is Feanor, black is Fingolfin and gold is Finarfin, then who are the 'three'? It could be three of them, but you said Feanor isn't one of the three. Hm, maybe their children...but that doesn't work either, because while Feanor and Finarfin have a surviving child, Fingolfin does not...


Unless it's that choice, but if it were that choice, there should be five, not three...Or, it could be three, because three were in the last set, and each set chose once, making in three sets with three choices...

Red and Black are not Feanor and Fingolfin, though "the gold" is Finarfin. It's not their kids either.

hS

Red for fire, burning fierce
From forge to raging final cost.

Well, if these lines don't mean either Feanor or Maedhros, then what could they mean...?

Orodruin, perhaps...?

"For" does not mean what you think it does in this line (or the other comparable ones).

hS

What else could it mean then? Some other meaning in another language?

Oh, wait, something is nagging at my brain...

And I think I know what it is, thanks to your explanation of 'silver for gold' line to mean 'silver for Finarfin', and there is only one silver in Finarfin's life, his spouse. Feanor's spouse happened to have red hair, and Fingolfin's had black hair, presumably. But then, what was the choice? I know that all three chose to stay in Aman. Would that be the 'choice' you are talking about?

Correct! Red(dish)-haired* Nerdanel for - ie, marrying - Feanor, (probably) black-haired Anaire for Fingolfin, and silver-haired (per UT) Earwen for Finarfin. They each chose their spouses separately, but they all chose the same fate: to stay in Aman while their husbands and children departed.

Over to you!

hS

*Technically Nerdanel has brown hair - I think according to the Shibboleth - but I take that to be a reddish-brown or russet.

I like that riddle. And now here is the one of my own


The sorrow of the Elves is they live beyond their time
Until the world forgets them, save in tales and rhyme
The sorrow of the Elves is that all they love must die
Time withers all about them, yet the Elves it passes by
The sorrow of the Elves made them seek another place
And I alone remain, on these shores, I am the last of my lost race
Now I, alone, remain to mourn and count the cost
Of wars fought and lives lost
The sorrow now is mine, and it cannot heal,
For how long will the pain remain real
And how long must I bear the stamp of sorrow’s seal?

I keep coming back to this in the hopes of finding an answer that's not the obvious, but...

... is it just Maglor?

hS

Yes.

Phew! :D It's beautiful - very poetic - but I was terrified I was missing some sneaky trick. I think you caught me out with an Obviously Turin riddle some time ago, so I'm on my guard.

I'll see what I can come up with; hmm, actually I have an idea, just need to see if it works. :)

hS

And so the trend of editing song lyrics to make Tolkien riddles continues.

Okay, the one I wanted to do doesn't work, but I came up with this instead:

A sister to a brother
A husband to a wife
A daughter to a father
A brother to a sister
A mother to a son
A husband to the first
A chain of six who never met,
But who died first?

No Hobbits are involved in the answer, so don't say I never do anything nice for you. :D

hS

Hm.

I do have a plausible guess, but the last line invalidates it...

Unless... *looks at the riddle more closely*

Why does this remind me of well... *squints*

If the last question is literal, then I'll go with Mandos' interpretation, and say that Finwe died first. :D

But Finwe didn't die first, did he? Miriel did. ;)

The last question is literal, but not that flavour of literal. Neither Finwe nor Miriel are in the riddle.

(I believe Finwe was the first slain in Aman; Miriel just died.)

hS

Then I don't know what to do with the riddle. If the wife in the second line is the same as the sister in the first, I might, but otherwise, no. The clues are too vague and can refer to anyone who died, ever, and there are a lot of those. I can even say that Eilinel died first, and be correct, given the vagueness...

Nope, but there is someone in common between those two lines.

The word "chain" is doing more than you give it credit for.

hS

So, a few disconnected thoughts, to maybe help the collective effort.

We have 6 iterations of "a [kinsman] to a [kinsman, mostly]". Then there is "a chain of 6 who never met" - begging the connection that it just links all the above statements together, as opposed to a whole separate chain of 6. The difficulty? "The husband to the first" I initially took to mean "the first line/sister/answer" - but that implies a meeting between two answers, it is very hard to be a husband without ever meeting your wife, long-distance relationships aren't popularized in Middle-earth. So perhaps "first" does not, after all, refer to the first line, but to an actual First of some sort.

So what do all the relationship statements have in common? As the only concrete clue we have is the question in the end, my inclination is that they are somehow related to deaths - perhaps actuall killing, or prophecies, or even curses. Actual killings - I have trouble coming up with that many examples of kinslaying in first degree relatives, so probably not. But it does generally put me in mind of the Hurin family and the Gondolin fiasco as potential rich sources for answers. Another instance that comes to mind is Finrod's "I must be free to fulfil my vow" as potentially one of the brother/sister pairs. Were there any good Numenorian child/parent examples? I feel like there ought to be.

Or maybe the six of them were literally chained with a chain. Except no women were ever chained. Unless you mean a metaphorical chain...like Miriel being chained by Pharazon, or Eowyn being chained by expectations...

Or maybe it is Hurin's family. After all, Turin and Nienor were both brother and sister and husband and wife. And if this is the case, well, I am the one who died first. :cool:

Which would be a problem... why? :D

'tis neither Gondolin nor the House of Hurin.

hS

Because it specifically says 'the chain of six that never met'. Unless the six are linked by a common bond/chain...but with that, I keep thinking Turin is that chain...

As a different take, I decided to draw this out as a family tree, taking the first member of each line to be the same as the second of the preceding line. We get a pair of male/female siblings marrying a pair of male/female cousins - a closed chain, if you will. Now, do I really have to go perusing through the genealogies to find this pattern?

Hmmm...

Hurin/Huor and Rian/Morwen are siblings marrying cousins, but they are not male/female pairs.

Hareth/Haldir/Galdor/Gloredhel are male/female pairs, but I think both pairs are siblibgs, not cousins.

Darn it! Fiddling with bits of genealogy, I can only make pieces fit, but not the whole thing. Urwen, you tend to be better at this stuff than I am. Can you spot the pattern?

Now your hint about Not Hobbits makes a lot of sense. :D

Sorry, but I am clueless here too, as both of my guesses were incorrect.

I think I have it.

A sister to a brother - Eowyn to Eomer
A husband to a wife - Eomer to Lothiriel
A daughter to a father - Lothiriel to Imrahil
A brother to a sister - Imrahil to Finduilas
A mother to a son - Finduilas to Faramir
A husband to the first - And Faramir married Eowyn

Except that everyone involved met at least once...unless you're trickily referring to he fact that most of them never met Finduilas herself, who died first.

Spot on! The chain (or family) never all met, because at least one (Lothiriel) was born after Finduilas died. I suspect they're the only non-Hobbit family who form that particular chain, but if you'd found another one I would have given it to you for that.

Great teamwork, and sorry it was a bit of a clumsy riddle. Over to you.

hS

What are you talking about? That was a great riddle! Finding that particular pattern of genealogy that doesn't seem to repeat anywhere else in all of the family trees is brilliant.

I came to life after the great war
I cared for those who wished to be free
Until they denied the westward call
Sowing the seeds of their own fall

The King, far-seeing one, and his daughter fair
Sought to bring change, hiding their despair
But their plans were thwarted, their designs put to and end
And the rift grew, with no one left to mend

The daughter now weeps all alone
In a prison which she still calls home
And when the end came, unheard went her plea
She died with me, and we were finally free

I think that sounds like a very lovely poetic description of Numenor - the land which was created after the War of Wrath for the Edain. Tar-Palantir and Miriel tried to prevent the Fall, but Miriel was obviously thwarted by Pharazon and later drowned with the island while on her way to pray from Meneltarma.

That's it.

Bump?