Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithalwen
I have had a chance to look this up and there is a fortnight between the night the hobbits spent at Woodhall and Glorfindel leaving Rivendell which given that Gandalf, albeit on Shadowfax rode between Bree and Weathertop in 3 days seems quite enough to transmit the message by normal methods as long as horses were involved. Aragorn says it would take 12 days for him to get to Rivendell from Weathertop and maybe even elves would be pushed to manage the Woodyend to Rivendell on foot in 14. We know that the Rangers were aware of a developing situation and they clearly had some sort of structure with "caches" at Weathertop and probably Fornost Erain. The rangers did have horses even if they went on foot when stealth was required.
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I would add that the Bad Guys made use of bird-messengers, and there's little reason to think the Elves couldn't. I note that Gandalf tells Radagast "Send out messages to all the beasts and birds that are your friends. Tell them to bring news of anything that bears on this matter to Saruman and Gandalf. Let messages be sent to Orthanc."
And in real life Tolkien was directly familiar with carrier pigeons, a major mode of communication for a battalion signals officer in WWI.
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EDIT:We also know that some Rangers were at this time not far away, on the south-border of the Shire especially around Sarn Ford; just two day before they had held off the Riders there for some hours.