This article is part of Findegil’s Insider’s Guide to The Lord of the Rings
I am quite surprised to find a great disturbance concerning the Eagles of Manwë. Perhaps you know of what I speak. This infernal question which ever and anon is raised by someone who feels Gwaihir the Windlord should have swooped down into the Shire or Rivendell, picked up the Ringbearer, and carried him willy-nilly to the Black Land without so much as a care in the world. There the magnificent creature should be expected to deposit the Ringbearer near the Sammath Naur and the whole story would be brought to an end. Or would it? Such inattentive readers, indeed! Ronald may not have told you the full story in his much abridged version of events, but he did say a few things about the eagles.
These are wondrous beasts, and the eagles of Middle-earth today are but pale and limpid cousins to the mighty winged messengers of the Valar who at one time stood watch over the Mortal Lands. They were sent to Middle-earth for a purpose, not to be a taxi service or to provide on-the-minute news updates. And yet they were living creatures made of flesh and blood. They were subject to limitations not only of the flesh, but also of the spirit. They were forbidden, you see, to take direct action in most of the afairs of Mortal and Elven kind.
I sense a few raised eyebrows. Yes, my friends, the truth is that the eagles were not always at liberty to swoop down out of the sky in force to overcome some terrible enemy. Have you never wondered why Thorondor and his folk did not warn Gondolin of the impending doom which marched through their mountains? Oh, the old boy rightfully kept an eye on matters, but he knew his place in the scheme of things. When the time came for Gondolin’s fall Thorondor and the Eagles were constrained to withhold their aid until all was lost. The survivors benefitted from the watchful eyes of the Eagles, but most of Gondolin’s people perished or were taken into slavery.
Yet one should consider the terrible price the eagles themselves paid on occasion for giving aid to Men and Elves. These splendid bird-like messengers consumed a large amount of food. Their hunting eyries were normally scattered widely across the lands, and for the eagles to gather a sufficient force to oppose an army required not only much time but also careful planning. They often called upon other creatures to aid them in their journeys. Oh, no, they didn’t simply ring up the local warren and ask for 5,000 rabbits to be waiting en route. But they did arrange for a supply of food at several stops. Otherwise they would arrive at the battle (if at all) weakened and spent, hardly useful to anyone.
Concerning the matter of the Great Ring, it strikes me as rather foolish to ask why some eagle didn’t offer to provide assistance. What was the eagle to do, glide for more than 1,000 miles from Hobbiton to Amon Amarth, stopping for a brace of coneys and fish once a day? Hunting requires time, and no two landscapes are alike. There were many empty and desolate lands between the Shire and the Black Land, as well as many lands where eagles would not be welcomed. The shepherds of Dunland and Rohan would certainly not welcome the visit of one or more great birds, hungry for prey in lands where none was to be found except perhaps in the flocks of sheep Men cared for.
Would the Dark Lord have noticed a flying eagle, or more than one, on their approach to the Black Land, assuming they could have arrived at the Morannon in good health and without mishap in the lands of Men? More than likely he would have known of their approach long before they crossed the Great River. The Dark Lord employed many spies. He knew the ways and whereabouts of most if not all the creatures who opposed him. The Great Eagles were a nuissance or worse for the servants of the Dark Lord in the Misty Mountains, and the Dark Lord’s spies would have noticed a flock of eagles far from home and sent back report post haste. What would eagles be doing so far from their eyries? It would have drawn the Dark Lord’s attention directly to the Ringbearer, and that certainly would not satisfy Mithrandir’s plans.
But let us suppose Gwaihir himself had reached Amon Amarth unmolested with the Ringbearer safely in his grasp. Here the Great Bird has flown west to the Shire, southeast to the Black Land, fed only on the occasional rabbit (and the Valar alone know how the Ringbearer would have fared — should Gwaihir have stopped off in Lorien or Imladris for a few wafers of lembas, a gift rarely bestowed upon mortals at all?), and now must arrange to deposit the Ringbearer somewhere close to the Sammath Naur. We can suppose this much Gwaihir would be able to do. But what then? Who would be there to urge the Ringbearer to cast away his burden, which knowing where it was and what he intended, would not be so eager to leave his hand? Should the Ringbearer then have cast himself into the Fire? What a great sacrifice that would prove! Could he have done it?
Alternatively we must dispense with the absurd notion that Gwaihir, near-starved and worn with exhaustion, might simply fly above the mountain’s smoking mouth and drop the Ringbearer into the fire from the sky. An Eagle of Manwë would not so resort to murder, not to save all the inhabitants of Middle-earth! Hence, there would be no option of destroying the Ring if the Eagles had been inclined to assist in the process and were asked. Mithrandir knew this already; he was no fool or swift-to-act-long-to-regret advisor. A simple glance at the map and a thorough knowledge of the Dark Lord’s growing power would have dismissed such a thought should it dared to have occurred to Mithrandir at all.
But there were great events where the skies were filled with Eagles. Indeed, they came to the Battle of Five Armies and they came also to the Battle of the Morannon. There were other events where the Eagles appeared in force. When so ordered by Manwë, with whom they communed in spirit, the Eagles would indeed rise up in force — and on such days their fortitude was strengthened by the Valar, and their speed driven by the winds of Manwë, he who commands the breath of Arda. If the Eagles were moved to great action, one was surely witnessing the blessing of the Valar, and their own direct or near-direct intervention. It was a sign that the end of darkness had been achieved at last in the Third Age when the Great Eagles arrived to aid the beleaguered forces of Gondor, Rohan, and the North.
I myself have never seen one of these tremendous creatures, but Gondor was filled with stories of their magnificence, of their great courage and their devoted service to Manwë. It is said their ancestors endured unspeakable horrors at the hands of Morgoth in the First Age. They have suffered much at the hands of Men, too, for as the millenia passed by Men became estranged from all the creatures of old who once roamed wide and free throughout Middle-earth. It would have been a great wonder to see these champions of the air soaring overhead in challenge to the Dark Lord, but such an event could never be. Alone even the Eagles would accomplish little, save to stir up the anger of the Dark Lord’s enmity, and unless they could have contrived to separate the Ringbearer from his burden, all the Eagles of the mountains would not have sufficed to bring about the end of Sauron, lord of the Black Land.
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