Enemies

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Originally Posted by davem

But he didn't say 'I hear some very angry people' - he said 'I hear animals'

This got me to thinking of a piece by Edgar Allan Poe, which surely you're all familiar with, found here.

Originally Posted by Dupin in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'

"That was the evidence itself," said Dupin, "but it was not the peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinctive. Yet there was something to be observed. The witnesses, as you remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity is not that they disagreed --but that, while an Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. Each is sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen. Each likens it --not to the voice of an individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant --but the converse.

Did Eomer, when describing the voices of the Dunlanders, have no better reference? The voices did not sound like those from Mundburg, were not speaking 'Common,' and did not sound orcish. How else would one so young and of so little worldy experience have described a new and strange tongue?

Add to this the fact that these Dunlanders were, at the moment, attacking, and that Eomer may have been somewhat tired from the events of recent days. One could then conclude that Eomer wasn't making any statement on race, but how the sounds sounded at that moment to his ears.