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Forlong of Lossarnach

Other Names: Forlong the Fat

Location(s): Lossarnach

Race/Species: Man

Type/Kind: Dunadan of Gondor

Title(s): Lord of Lossarnach

Dates: died: III 15 March 3019

Description:

A lord of Gondor from Lossarnach who died in the Battle of the Pelennor:
'Forlong! Forlong!' Pippin heard men calling. 'What do they say?' he asked.

'Forlong has come,' Bergil answered; 'old Forlong the Fat, the Lord of Lossarnach.... Hurrah! Here he is. Good old Forlong!'

Leading the line there came walking a big thick-limbed horse, and on it sat a man of wide shoulders and huge girth, but old and grey-bearded, yet mail-clad and black-helmed and bearing a long heavy spear. Behind him marched proudly a dusty line of men, well-armed and bearing great battle-axes; grim-faced they were, and shorter and somewhat swarthier than any men that Pippin had yet seen in Gondor.

'Forlong!' men shouted. 'True heart, true friend! Forlong!' But when the men of Lossarnach had passed they muttered: 'So few! Two hundreds, what are they? We hoped for ten times the number. That will be the new tidings1 of the black fleet. They are sparing only a tithe of their strength.'

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 1, Minas Tirith

And now the fighting waxed furious on the fields of the Pelennor..... But the horsemen rode eastward to the succour of Éomer: Húrin the Tall Warden of the Keys, and the Lord of Lossarnach, and Hirluin of the Green Hills, and Prince Imrahil the fair with his knights all about him.

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 6, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

[Many]... were hurt or maimed or dead upon the field. The axes hewed Forlong as he fought alone and unhorsed....

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 6, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

No few had fallen, renowned or nameless, captain or soldier; for it was a great battle and the full count of it no tale has told. So long afterward a maker in Rohan said in his song of the Mounds of Mundburg:
...
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,
Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 6, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

[The] names of nearly all places and persons in the realm of Gondor were of Elvish form and meaning. A few were of forgotten origin, and descended doubtless from days before the ships of the Númenóreans sailed the Sea.... Forlong was also a name of the same sort.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix F, The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age: Of Men


Notes
1   'There is a great fleet drawing near to the mouths of Anduin, manned by the corsairs of Umbar.... [This] attack will draw off much of the help that we looked to have from Lebennin and Belfalas, where folk are hardy and numerous.'

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 1, Minas Tirith

Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 21Oct06, 12Mar08

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