- "Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way,
- In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey,
- By a dark pool's borders without wind or tide,
- Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide."
- —The Mewlips
The Merlock Mountains were a mountain range, near the dwelling of the Mewlips, in the invented folk-lore[1] of the Hobbits of the Shire.
They are mentioned only in the poem "The Mewlips"[2], given in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book.
Behind the scenes
Tolkien confirmed in a 1963 letter to one Miss Allen that the Mewlips, and thereby the strange entities of the poem named after them, were made up as legend’s by the Shire-folk.[1]
Some Tolkien scholars have tried to identify the Mewlips more precisely. As the Mewlips could possibly be a misremembering of Orcs or Trolls, and because the poem describes a location similar to Mirkwood, it is speculated that the Merlock Mountains were a fictitious version of real places were Orcs dwelt, like the Misty Mountains, Mountains of Mirkwood, or Grey Mountains.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 TCG Letter #1063 at the Tolkien Collector's Guide
- ↑ The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, "The Mewlips"
- ↑ The Complete Guide to Middle-earth