Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
Hmm, because we want to? 
And Tolkien, when he was aware of an error in already published text, sometimes tried to work with it in some internal way. Not always, but sometimes he would, in my opinon to help with the inner consistency of the subcreated world.
In this case we all seem to agree that Tolkien just forgot this line, so why not try to make it work (I say).
No Tolkien wasn't perfect, but at times he played this 'game' himself, no? |
Well, Tolkien the inveterate Patience-player would often play the 'game'- most especially since as a philologist and medievalist he was as aware as any man how things in the real world grow organically and not according to regular, artificial 'patterns;' it's interesting in this light not only his love of trees in all their individuality, but how often in his writing even those RW epitomes of Vitruvian regularity, pillars and columns, are carved in the shapes of trees.
So if there was a bump which he perceived as being an organic 'bud' he would often leave it unpruned and see how it grew- but one can hardly say that of things like Eomer's "three nights ago;" either he got word of the Orc-raid three nights
or four nights prior, it can't have been both.