return

1468 the return of the king
ment. The Cirth in their older and simpler form spread eastward
in the Second Age, and became known to many peoples, to Men
and Dwarves, and even to Orcs, all of whom altered them to suit
their purposes and according to their skill or lack of it. One such
simple form was still used by the Men of Dale, and a similar one
by the Rohirrim.
But in Beleriand, before the end of the First Age, the Cirth,
partly under the influence of the Tengwar of the Noldor, were
rearranged and further developed. Their richest and most
ordered form was known as the Alphabet of Daeron, since in
Elvish tradition it was said to have been devised by Daeron, the
minstrel and loremaster of King Thingol of Doriath. Among the
Eldar the Alphabet of Daeron did not develop true cursive forms,
since for writing the Elves adopted the Fëanorian letters. The
Elves of the West indeed for the most part gave up the use of runes
altogether. In the country of Eregion, however, the Alphabet of
Daeron was maintained in use and passed thence to Moria, where
it became the alphabet most favoured by the Dwarves. It remained
ever after in use among them and passed with them to the North.
Hence in later times it was often called Angerthas Moria or the
Long Rune-rows of Moria. As with their speech the Dwarves
made use of such scripts as were current and many wrote the Fëanorian
letters skilfully; but for their own tongue they adhered to the
Cirth, and developed written pen-forms from them.
(i)
the fëanorian letters
The table shows, in formal book-hand shape, all the letters that
were commonly used in the West-lands in the Third Age. The
arrangement is the one most usual at the time, and the one in
which the letters were then usually recited by name.
This script was not in origin an ‘alphabet’: that is, a haphazard
series of letters, each with an independent value of its own,
recited in a traditional order that has no reference either to their
shapes or to their functions. 1 It was, rather, a system of conson-
1 The only relation in our alphabet that would have appeared intelligible
to the Eldar is that between P and B; and their separation from one
another, and from F, M, V, would have seemed to them absurd.