A Question for Old Tolkien
A Question for Old Tolkien
I need a time machine, you see
Not for conquest, nor for fame,
But to knock on the door of Oxford’s lore
And call out Tolkien’s name.
“Professor!” I’d say, with a courteous bow,
“Your realms are rich, your maps profound,
But I’ve a question that’s troubled me now—
And it’s nowhere in your Silmarillion bound.
Where are the Orc women, sir?
Who bore the brutes of Mordor’s might?
Did Morgoth play midwife in the dark,
Or did shadow spawn them in the night?
You gave us Elven queens and mortal maids,
Shieldmaidens fierce and Entwives lost—
But not a whisper, not a shade
Of Orcish wombs, nor birthing cost.
Were they bred in vats, like twisted clay?
Or cursed from men, as some have said?
Did they sing lullabies in Uruk tongue
To babes with eyes of burning red?
Did Sauron host a nursery wing
In Barad-dûr’s infernal keep?
Or did the mothers of Mordor weep
While their children marched to war and sting?
You see, it’s not just lore I seek—
It’s justice for the unseen face.
For every horde that stormed the gate,
There must’ve been a birthing place.
So tell me, sir, if you’d be kind,
What role did Orcish women play?
Or were they lost to myth and mind,
Erased from tales that men relay?”
A response perhaps from Old Tolkien to this time travelling bard
Dear Sir,
Your question arrives like a thunderclap upon the quiet hills of my retirement. I confess, it is not often that one is addressed by a poet from the future—least of all one who travels by verse and vexation. You ask, with admirable candour, “Where are the Orc women?” and I must admit: the answer is not easily given.
The Orcs, as I conceived them, were a corruption—twisted mockeries of Elves, bred by Morgoth in the deep pits of Angband. Whether by sorcery, torture, or some dark parody of nature, they came into being not through the gentle rhythms of birth, but through the violent cadence of domination. It is a grim origin, and one I did not dwell upon, perhaps to spare the reader—or myself—the full horror of such invention.
Yet you are right to ask. If Orcs lived, they must have bred. If they bred, there must have been mothers. And if there were mothers, then there were lives lived in shadow, unseen and unspoken. I did not write of them. Not because they did not exist, but because I could not bear to imagine their suffering. The tales I told were of light and loss, of courage and fall. The Orcs were the enemy, the faceless horde. To give them mothers would be to give them humanity—and that, I fear, would unravel the moral clarity of the tale.
But perhaps I erred. Perhaps myth must bear the weight of all its children, even those born in darkness. You, bard of the future, have done what I did not: you have asked the question. You have given voice to the silence. And in doing so, you remind us that every world, no matter how fantastical, must reckon with the lives it forgets.
I thank you for your troubling gift.
Yours in myth and memory,
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Bard’s Retort
Dear Professor, I read your words
Ink-stained, wise, and gently grim.
You speak of myth, of moral chords,
Of tales that sing but never swim.
You say the Orcs were born of hate,
Twisted, tortured, bred in pain.
That motherhood would complicate
The clarity of war’s refrain.
But sir, I come from lands downstream,
Where stories ripple, break, and bend.
Where even monsters dare to dream,
And silence is a kind of sin to mend.
You spared us the horror, yes
But spared them too much, I fear.
For every faceless foe you drew
Had once been held, had once known fear.
You gave us Éowyn’s mighty blade,
Galadriel’s light, Arwen’s grace
But none who bore the Orcish shade
Were granted name, or voice, or face.
And I ask not for pity’s sake,
Nor to soften Mordor’s song
But to remind the tales we make
That forgetting is a kind of wrong.
For myth is not just light and gold,
It’s shadow, blood, and broken bone.
And every child, however cold,
Deserves to know they’re not alone.
So I thank you, sir, for all you gave—
The stars, the swords, the Elven lore.
But I’ll walk paths you did not pave,
And sing of those you did ignore.
Yours in fire and fading tune,
The Bard Beyond Yonder Moon
Miku light humour
Maharaja Rich has found a cover band of Spiral Arm Galaxy called Spiral ORC Galaxy
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