Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
"Southern hill" might refer to Amon Lanc, the hill in southern Mirkwood upon which Dol Guldur stood.
|
WHY THANK YOU!!!
But now, this makes
perfect sense! This only supports my theory that it is about Dol Guldur!
What we have here, in that case, is parallelism on two subsequent lines:
From Wilderland to Western shore,
from northern waste to southern hill,
through dragon-lair and hidden door
and darkling woods he walked at will.
So we can divide this part of the song among two themes: one related to
the Dragons (one of the "big baddies" Frodo knew that Gandalf had a hand in getting rid of; the chief villain of Bilbo's story) and the second related
to Sauron, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (the other "big baddie" Frodo knew that Gandalf opposed; the villain of Frodo's own story).
Thus, the Dragon-related part is the "northern waste" (cf. the map in the Hobbit, "far to the North, the Withered Heath whence came the Great Worms"), pertaining to the place where dragons are known to come from. And "dragon-lair" being obviously associated with the Dragons and Smaug (he originally too came to Dale from the North where the rest of his kind live).
And secondarily, if we take
William's (not mine, see! Therefore trustworthy, independent source!) postulate that "southern hill" is Amon Lanc/Dol Guldur, the hill in the south of Mirkwood (where Gandalf went secretly to ascertain Sauron's presence), then we have "southern hill" as well as "hidden door", which also points to the fact that Gandalf entered Dol Guldur secretly. Both relate to the other big feat of Gandalf's, his scouting of Dol Guldur.
***
Sidenote: Actually, if you want to divide this whole strophe without leaving anything unassigned, you could also assign the first line ("Wilderland") to the Dragon and the last one ("darkling woods") to Sauron. It would work as well, the poetic language is not that precise in terms of geography. (In reality, "the darkling woods" are a part of "Wilderland"; but as words, the term "Wilderland" may evoke Dragons, whereas "darkling woods", as a periphrasis to Mirkwood, may point more specifically to the Necromancer. Especially with the use of the word whose root is "dark-", further evocative of the themes of darkness, the Dark Lord and so on.)
Or option B, you can just say that line 1 and 4 simply frame the whole verse, being parallel or synonymous to each other (delineating the space in which Gandalf moved: the first line externally by describing the border - the utmost limits from-to; the fourth line internally, describing it based on what lies inside the border: majority of the space delineated in verse 1 is filled by "darkling woods").
Ta-dum!