The Maegd Feorran

Ginormous thanks to NeumeIndil who accepted my request to challenge me, saying “Theoden son of Thengel had 3 sisters besides Theodwyn. Pick one.” So, I did.

This piece is self-betaed, so if you see something you think needs to be corrected, please pm me.


Title: The title is derived from Old English, and is intended to mean “Woman from the South.” I got my vocabulary from a variety of websites, including:
http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm
http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/vocab/wordlist.html

I could not find a word for ‘girl’, go figure.

Names: In keeping with ‘Théoden’ and ‘Théodwyn’ I used Rohirric (Old English/Anglo-Saxon) names for the two sisters alive at the time of the removal to Rohan, but decided that the friends and family that Morwen and Tortgyd had left behind in Lossarnach would have Sindarin-derived names.

The Old English/Anglo Saxon names come from here: http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/aelfwyn/bede.html

While the Sindarin names came from here: http://www.realelvish.net/gondorian_names.php

Travel time/distance: As always, details of travel time and distance came from Erinrua and Sulriel’s magnificent site: http://www.theoriginalseries.com/traveltimes.htm. Since Thengel’s household was travelling by caravan, with horses, carriages and wains, I used the maximum time.

Conventions: This is a work of imagination, not scholarship, and for the purposes of this story I imagined Thengel’s wife and children riding in a well-fitted out wain, but Tortgyd refers to it as a carriage. Also, being as I wanted to have Tortgyd’s story told in her own voice, I imagined she had been educated enough to write a letter with a friend who could write her back.