† Here Eorl had his house; it passed after Brego son of Eorl removed to Edoras into the hands of Eofor, third son of Brego, from whom Éomund, father of Éomer, claimed descent. The Folde was part of the King’s Lands, but Aldburg remained the most convenient base for the Muster of the East-mark. [Author’s note.]
* I.e., when Éomer pursued the Orcs, captors of Meriadoc and Peregrin, who had come down into Rohan from the Emyn Muil. The words that Éomer used to Aragorn were: ‘I led forth my éored, men of my own household’ (The Two Towers III 2).
* Those who did not know of the events at court naturally assumed that the reinforcements sent west were under Éomer’s command as the only remaining Marshal of the Mark. [Author’s note.] – The reference here is to the words of Ceorl, the Rider who met the reinforcements coming from Edoras and told them what had happened in the Second Battle of the Fords of Isen (The Two Towers III 7).
† Théoden called a council of ‘the marshals and captains’ at once, and before he took a meal; but it is not described, since Meriadoc was not present (‘I wonder what they are all talking about.’). [Author’s note.] – The reference is to The Return of the King V 3.
* Grimbold was a lesser marshal of the Riders of West-mark in Théodred’s command, and was given this position, as a man of valour in both the battles at the Fords, because Erkenbrand was an older man, and the King felt the need of one of dignity and authority to leave behind in command of such forces as could be spared for the defence of Rohan. [Author’s note.] – Grimbold is not mentioned in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings until the final ordering of the Rohirrim before Minas Tirith (The Return of the King V 5).
* The statement that Enedwaith was in the days of the Kings part of the realm of Gondor seems to conflict with that immediately preceding, that ‘the western bounds of the South Kingdom was the Isen’. Elsewhere (see p. 343) it is said that Enedwaith ‘belonged to neither kingdom’.
† Cf. p. 340, where it is said that ‘a fairly numerous but barbarous fisher-folk dwelt between the mouths of the Gwathló and the Angren (Isen)’. No mention is made there of any connection between these people and the Drúedain, though the latter are said to have dwelt (and to have survived there into the Third Age) in the promontory of Andrast, south of the mouths of Isen (p. 496 and note 13).
* Cf. The Lord of the Rings Appendix F (‘Of Men’): ‘The Dunlendings were a remnant of the peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White Mountains in ages past. The Dead Men of Dunharrow were of their kin. But in the Dark Years others had removed to the southern dales of the Misty Mountains; and thence some had passed into the empty lands as far north as the Barrow-downs. From them came the Men of Bree; but long before these had become subjects of the North Kingdom of Arnor and had taken up the Westron tongue. Only in Dunland did Men of this race hold to their old speech and manners: a secret folk, unfriendly to the Dúnedain, hating the Rohirrim.’
18 * By whom it was called Glæˆmscrafu, but the fortress Súthburg, and after King Helm’s day the Hornburg. [Author’s note.] – Glæˆmscrafu (in which the sc is pronounced as sh) is Anglo-Saxon, ‘caves of radiance’, with the same meaning as Aglarond.
19 * Attacks were often made on the garrison of the west bank, but these were not pressed: they were in fact only made to distract the attention of the Rohirrim from the north. [Author’s note.]
20 * An account of these invasions of Gondor and Rohan is given in The Lord of the Rings Appendix A (I, iv and II).
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