[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

Do you have any idea how a dunlendish war cry sounds? Do you have any proof that a dunlendish war cry is significantly different from that of an orc war cry (or that the difference would be perceptible from any distance)?

Well, clearly they are distinguishable from a distance because Gamling recognises them from the same distance away as Eomer:

"But these creatures of Isengard, these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred, they will not quail at the sun," said Gamling. 'And neither will the wild men of the hills. Do you not hear their voices?"

"I hear them," said Eomer; 'but they are only the scream of birds and the bellowing of beasts to my ears."

Originally Posted by Raynor

Even if dunlendish cries are different from orc cries, you would still be making two errors of reasoning:

Again, they must be different from Orc cries because Gamling distinguishes between them.

- fallacy of division: Eomer described how that group in the night sounded; to say that what he thought of the group is what he also thought of part of the group, without evidence of this, is erroneous reasoning.

So Eomer was commenting on the enemy's skill in making farmyard noises, & his comment was not meant perjoratively?

- false dillemma: the fact in itself that a person recognises that another group (most likely) intentionally makes savage sounds doesn't exclude that the person in question doesn't have racial attitude towards that group - unless there is additional evidence, of which I know none. This in itself is not a qualifier.

I don't think we're dealing with 'racism' in the modern (specifically the post Nazi) sense, but an attitude - Both Woses & Dunlendings are 'savages', not fully human, & therefore to kill either is not the same as killing a human being in the eyes of the Rohirrim. The Dunlendings sound like 'animals', the Woses both look & sound like 'animals', hence neither merits being treated like humans. Clearly there has never been any attempt at raprochement in the 500 years since the Rohirrim took over Calenardhon, & the Dunlendings, having been dispossessed of their lands, have been left to try & survive for the whole of that time.

Of course, the Rohirrim are a very narrow minded bunch - Fangorn may be on the borders of their land, & Lorien not too far distant, yet they are as dismissive of the idea of 'walking trees' as any Hobbit, reject Galadriel & the Elves as 'net weavers & sorcerers' & Hobbits as figures out old stories. Basically, whe confronted with anything 'out of the ordinary' their response seems to have been to disbelieve it if they could & to attempt to destroy it if they couldn't.

And it seems they themselves were hardly viewed as ideals of virtue - the suspicion that they were in league with the enemy must have come from somewhere & had some justification. The Rohirrin were an illiterate people, handy in a fight, but hardly the most intelligent, compassionate or enlightened group in M-e.

As Faramir states:

"For so we reckon Men in our lore, calling them the High, or Men of the West, which were Numenoreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness. 'Yet now, if the Rohirrim are grown in some ways more like to us, enhanced in arts and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and can scarce claim any longer the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Twilight, but with memory of other things. For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as things good in themselves, both a sport and an end; and though we still hold that a warrior should have more skills and knowledge than only the craft of weapons and slaying, we esteem a warrior, nonetheless, above men of other crafts.

The Gondorians are falling from their 'high' status to the 'middling' status of their nothern neighbours, but the Rohirrim are becoming more enhanced in arts & gentleness - which statement clearly implies that they were not always so, but also makes clear that the influence of Rohan on the Gondorians is to make them esteem war & valour above other things - things that had a higher value in the past.
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